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SKETOH OF THE HISTORY OP THS 



HOUSE OP RUSSELL 



DAVID ROSS 



LONDON 



S, ORR & GO. 
1848 






The writer of the following pages was induced, some 
months ago, by circumstances purely accidental, to com- 
mence the publication of a series of articles, in the 
local paper with which he is connected, under the title 
of "Notes on the Nobility." These, it would seem, 
have been perused by a numerous class of readers, with 
some degree of interest. He has consequently been 
pressed by applications from various quarters, to repub- 
lish them in a separate and more convenient form. He is 
so far willing to comply with the request, as to venture 
upon issuing the following Sketch of the History of 
the House of Russell, in its present shape. Should 
the experiment prove successful, he may probably repeat 
it, at a future time, with others of the series. Should 
it be otherwise, he may be allowed to express a hope 
that his present obtrusion on the world of letters, will, 
by a generous public, be forgiven, or — forgotten. 

Chronicle Office^ Liverpool, 
\sCFehruary, 1848. 



^f^"^*^ 



^5 



■^1 



-^U 



SKETCH OF THE HISTOEY 



OF THE 



HOUSE OF RUSSELL 



The house of Russell lias long held a distinguished rank 
among the nobility of this country. The name is derived 
from one of the fiefs which the first chieftain of that sur- 
name possessed, anterior to the conquest of England, in 
Lower Normandy. The chateau of Rozel stands on a cape, 
fronting the sea, and the name, according to Roquefort, 
implies a tower, or bold headland, by the water j from 
Roz, the rook or castle of the chessboard, and el, the syno- 
nyme for eau. The family of the Du Rozels were known 
by that surname prior to 1066. The immediate foundation, 
however, of their wealth and honours was laid in the reign 
of Henry VIII. ; but they were lords of the manor of King- 
ston Russell, in the county of Dorset, early in the thirteenth 
century. John Russell of that manor, which was held by 
grand serjeantry that '* they should present a cup of beer 
unto our sovereign lord the king on the four principal feasts 
of the year," was constable of Corfe Castle in 1221. His 
son, Sir Ralph, married a daughter of Lord de Newmarch 
and Derham, descended from Bernard de Newmarch, one 
of the followers of the Conqueror into England. He had 
livery of the lands acquired by his marriage. His son. Sir 
William, had a charter for a fair at Kingston Russell, and 

B 



Z SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

was knight of the shire for the county of Southampton in 
1307. Several generations afterwards, Sir John Russell, 
the head of the family, was Speaker of the House of Com- 
mons, in the reign of Henry VI., 1423-1431. His son, 
James, by his first wife, Alice, daughter of John Wyse, 
Esq., was father of 

JOHN, FIRST EARL OF BEDFORD. 

This distinguished nobleman owed his introduction to 
the court of Henry VII. to a mere accident. Philip, Arch- 
duke of Austria, having married the heiress of Castile, and 
being shipwrecked in January, 1505, at "Weymouth, whither 
he was driven by a great storm, (Stow says of eleven days,) 
on his passage from Flanders to Spain, was hospitably 
entertained by Sir Thomas Trenchard, one of the chief 
persons of that part of Dorsetshire, till Henry had received 
the news of his arrival, and invited him to court. It 
chanced that Sir Thomas sent for his cousin, Mr. Russell, 
then lately returned from his travels, with great fame for 
his skill in foreign languages, to wait on the royal stranger, 
who was so much pleased by the conversation of his visitor 
that he took him in his company to Windsor, and recom- 
mended him strongly to Henry, who immediately received 
him into high favour, and appointed him a gentleman of 
the privy chamber. Henry VIII., who succeeded to the 
throne about four years after this event, received him with 
increased favour. They were about the same age, and 
Russell possessed most of the qualities which usually 
attracted that prince's favourable notice — a sedate and 
clear understanding, a courageous heart, and a learned 
education, finished and polished by foreign travel. In 
1513 he accompanied the king to France, where, during 
the siege of Therouenne, Russell, with 250 men, recovered 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 3 

a piece of ordnance from 10,000 French, under one ot their 
ablest generals ; and so quickly did he cut off a large 
supply of provisions the enemy had sent towards the 
town, that Henry, when he returned from that service, 
believed he had not then set out. "While we are fooling,'* 
cried Henry, " the town is relieved." " So it is indeed,'* 
answered Russell, " for I have sent them 2000 carcasses, 
and they have spared me 1200 waggons of provisions." 
" Ay, but," said the king, " I sent after you to cut off the 
bridge Dreban." " That," replied Russell, " was the first 
thing I did ; w^herefore I am upon my knees for your 
majesty's grace and pardon." " Nay, then," concluded 
the king, " by'r lady thou hast not my pardon only, but 
my favour too." In 1518, he was commissioned to restore 
Tournay to the French, at the siege of which he had dis- 
tinguished himself; in 1522 he w^as knighted by Lord 
Surrey, at Morlaix ; in 1525, was at the battle of Pa via ; 
attended Henry at his interview with Francis in 1532 ; 
and on the 29th March, 1538, was created Baron Rubsell 
of Chenies, an estate acquired by marriage. In 1540, on 
the dissolution of the greater monasteries, he became en- 
riched beyond all precedent by grants from their spoil, par- 
ticularly in Devonshire, where he obtained, together with 
the borough and town of Tavistock, the entire demesne of 
its very rich abbey, comprising nearly thirty manors, with 
many large estates in other parts of the county, a? well as 
in those of Bucks and Somerset. In 1541 he was constituted 
Lord Admiral of England and Ireland, and at the attack of 
Boulogne by Henry in person he commanded the vanguard. 
The king, who died in the succeeding year, appointed him 
one of the sixteen executors to his will, who formed a council 
of regency for the administration of affairs during the mi- 



4 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

nority of Edward VI. At the coronation of that prince he 
was Lord High Steward, and soon after received from the 
crown a grant of the great estates of the dissolved monastery 
of Woburn, in Bedfordshire, which has since become the 
chief residence of his successors. A formidable insurrec- 
tion in the western counties, in 1549, against the measures 
of the Reformation, called him again into military service. 
The insurgents, who formed a regular army of 10,000 men, 
demanded that the mass should be restored, half of the 
abbey lands resumed, the law of the six articles executed, 
holy water and holy bread respected,and all other grievances 
redressed. Lord Russell had been sent against them with 
a small force ; but being too weak to encounter them in the 
field, he began to negotiate. Finding their demands eluded, 
they marched to Exeter, carrying before them crosses, ban- 
ners, holy water, candlesticks, and other implements of 
ancient superstition, together with the host, which they 
covered with a canopy. The citizens of Exeter shut their 
gates ; and the rebels, as they had no cannon, endeavoured 
to take the place, first by scalade, then by mining ; but were 
repulsed in every attempt. Russell, meanwhile, being rein- 
forced with some German horse and Italian arquebusiers, 
attacked the rebels, drove them from all their posts, did 
great execution on them both in the action and pursuit, and 
took many prisoners. Humphrey Arundel, governor, of St. 
Michael's Mount, and the other leaders, were sent to Lon- 
don, tried and executed ; many of the inferior sort were put 
to death by martial law ; and the vicar of St. Thomas, one 
of the principal incendiaries, was hanged on the top of his 
own steeple, arrayed in his popish weeds, with his beads at 
his girdle. A very lengthened and particular account of 
this affair is given in Hollinshed's chronicle. It was an 



X 



r/ 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. O 

eminent public service, and Russell was rewarded accor- 
dingly, for on 19th January, 1550, he was created Earl of 
Bedford. During the violence of the struggle between 
Dudley and the protector Somerset, he was fortunately in 
France negotiating a peace. He did not long survive the 
accession of Queen Mary. His last public service was an 
embassy to Philip of Spain (grandson of the archduke who 
had recommended him to Henry VII.,) whom he escorted 
in 1554 from Corunna to London, and introduced to that 
princess as a bridegroom. He died at his house in the \. 
Strand, on the I4th March, 1555, and was buried at Chenies, 
leaving by his countess Anne, daughter and sole heir to 
Sir Guy Sapcote, and widow of Sir Thomas Broughton of 'k 
Tudrington, in Bedfordshire, an only child, Francis, his 
worthy and magnificent successor. — History affords us 
little on which to found a judgment of the earl's character. 
The celebrated Edmund Burke levelled a general censure 
at his memory to avenge an offence offered by his heir 
nearly three centuries after his death. Referring to the 
grant of the manor of Agmondesham, in Bucks, which was 
part of the estate of the attainted Stafford, Duke of Buck- 
ingham, Mr. Burke characterized it as a gift " from the 
recent confiscations of the ancient nobility of the land." 
"The lion," he adds, alluding to Henry YIII., ** having 
sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the 
jackall in waiting ; having once tasted the blood of confis- 
cation, the favourites become fierce and ravenous." "This 
worthy favourite's first grant was from the lay nobility ; 
the second, infinitely improving upon the enormity of the 
first, w^as from the plunder of the church." If history 
could have furnished a single accusation against the Earl 
of Bedford, Burke's memorable philippic would certainly 

B 2 



D SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

have recorded it ; but it charges him only with having 
received great rewards, and barely insinuates that he might 
not have deserved them. There is a splendid portrait of 
the earl, by Holbein, in the collection of the Duke of Bed- 
ford. He is a venerable old man, with lofty features and 
a flowing beard. 

FRANCIS, SECOND EARL OF BEDFORD. 

Francis, second Earl of Bedford, was in his 27th year 
when he succeeded to the earldom. He had previously 
been knight of the shire for Northumberland, forming the 
first precedent in our history of a peer's eldest son being 
returned in that capacity. He married early in life, Mar- 
garet, widow of Sir John Gostwick, and daughter of Sir 
John St. John, of Bletso. By this lady he had four sons, 
Edward, John, Francis, and William, and three daughters, 
Anne, Elizabeth, and Margaret. The earl supported Queen 
Mary on her accession, and was eminently serviceable at 
the siege of St. Quintin. His attachment to the Reforma- 
tion subjected him to the persecution of Bonner and Gar- 
diner, being thrown into prison for his religious opinions. 
He escaped, however, from their fangs, and retired to 
Geneva. On the accession of Elizabeth he was called to 
her Privy Council ; and the countess was one of her ladies 
of honour until her death, in 1561. In 1564, he was ap- 
pointed governor of Berwick, and shortly after, a commis- 
sioner to negotiate the proposed marriage between Mary, 
Queen of Scots, and Lord Robert Dudley, on that occasion 
created Earl of Leicester, a project which was defeated by 
Mary's marriage with Darnley. In 1565, the marriage of 
the earl's eldest daughter Anne was celebrated with Lei" 
cester's brother, Ambrose Dudley, afterwards Earl of 
Warwick. The queen took a lively interest in the nup- 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 7 

tials, and graced with her presence the tournaments held in 
their celebration. An interesting account of the ceremony 
and of the feats of arms that followed, has been preserved, 
but is too long for quotation. In 1566 it became the duty 
of the Earl of Bedford, as the queen's representative in 
the north, to report to her council the circumstances at- 
tending the murder of Rizzio ; and his account contains 
many interesting particulars of that revolting catastrophe. 
In September of this year, the earl married for his second 
wife, Bridget, daughter of John, Lord Hussey, and widow 
both of Sir Richard Morrison, the able negotiator, and of 
Henry Manners, Earl of Rutland. On the 19th June, the 
Queen of Scots gave birth to her infant son, afterwards 
James I., in the castle of Edinburgh, and his baptism took 
place at Stirling on the 17th December, with great parade 
and magnificence. Mary had, at the very first, requested 
Queen Elizabeth to stand as sponsor or " gossip ;" and she 
had at the same time taken care to invite ambassadors from 
all the friendly powers abroad to be present at the ceremony. 
Before the appointed day, the Earl of Bedford arrived, with 
a retinue of eighty gentlemen on horseback, as ambassador 
from Elizabeth, bringing with him a font of gold to be em- 
ployed in the ceremony, as a present from his mistress to 
Queen Mary. The Earls of Murray and Bothwell, and 
Secretary Maitland, came forward two miles out of Stirling 
on the 14th, with one hundred horse, to do him honour, 
and brought him to the castle, and so to the presence of 
the queen immediately, before he had arrayed himself, 
" or even plucked off his boots." Mary, as he entered the 
presence chamber, was sitting by a bedside, attended by 
Huntley, Argyle, and many other earls and lords. " She 
saluted," says the chronicler of the day, " my lord of Bed- 



8 SKETCH OF THE HISTOEY 

ford with a kiss, whether he would or no ; and, after a little 
talk had with him, embraced all the gents ; after which we 
passed into the great chamber, where he had a banquet of 
sweetmeat, and so went from the castle." On the 15th, 
being Sunday, they attended service in the parish church, 
and after dinner, about two or three o'clock, Bedford and 
his attendants were sent for by the queen, and " had a 
long talk with her, which being ended, the queen w^ent into 
the nursery to see her bairn, which was brought openly in 
the presence for every man to see, by the Countess of 
Murray, governess to the prince ; and my lord going away, 
was sent for again to the queen in the nursery, to see the 
young prince naked, and lawful for every gentleman to 
see." After supper they went again to the court, " where 
they saw the queen dance and her ladies, and so did diverse 
Scottish gentlemen, and Mr. Carey and Mr. Hatton," (af- 
terwards Sir Christopher.) At this interview the earl de- 
livered his credentials, and informed the Scottish Queen 
that his mistress had appointed the Countess of Argyle to 
act as her proxy at the christening. On the following day, 
after supper, the earl delivered Elizabeth's present to the 
queen. It was a font of pure and massive gold, which 
weighed, according to Stowe, 333 ounces, and was valued 
at £1043 19s.; while a more homely Scottish chronicler of 
the day has recorded that it was " twa stane wecht." Large 
as it was, however, Elizabeth entertained apprehensions 
that it would be too small to contain the person of the 
infant prince ; and she had given Bedford instructions, 
among graver matters, " to say, pleasantly, that it was 
made as soon as she heard of the prince's birth, and then 
'twas big enough for him ; but now he, being grown, is too 
big for it ; therefore it maybe better used for the next child, 



OF THE HOUSE OF HUSSELL. \) 

provided it be christened before it outgrows the font." 
On the 17th the important ceremony was performed. The 
prince in the first place was borne out of his chamber to 
the adjacent royal chapel by the French ambassador, the 
Countess of A rgyle, &c. After them proceeded the Earl 
of Athol, bearing " ane gret serge of war," the Earl of 
Eglintoune bearing the " salt-fat," Lord Sempill bearing 
'' the cude," and Lord Ross bearing " the basin and ewer," 
which were to be employed in the ceremony. A multitude 
of nobles and gentlemen followed, each bearing in his 
hand a "large pricket of wax;" the time requiring such 
illumination, as it was at five in the afternoon that the 
solemnit)^ commenced. The ceremony was performed by 
John Hamilton, archbishop of St. Andrew's, a prelate 
whose fate it was, only five years after, to be hanged upon 
the neighbouring bridge over the Forth, a victim to the 
fierce party spirit which then tore the bowels of the nation. 
On the present occasion, in splendid unconsciousness of 
his fate, he appeared in full pontificals, staff, mitre, and 
crozier, and was assisted by the bishops of Dunkeld, Dum- 
blane, and Ross, with a multitude of humbler ofi&cials. 
He performed the whole of the ceremonies, in conformity 
to the custom of the Romish church, except " the spittle," 
which w^as omitted at the request of the queen.* After 
the solemnity, the child's name and titles were thrice pro- 
claimed by the heralds under sound of trumpet. The whole 
was concluded with singing and playing of organs. This 
done, they passed to the great hall to supper, whereat sat 
the queen's grace, the English ambassador being placed 
at her right hand, and attended by the Earl of Eglintoune 
as his carver, the Earl of Rothes as cupper, and the Earl 

* See Appendix, Note A. 



10 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

of Crawford, sewer. The supper w-as followed by " gret 
dancing and playing." Two days after the baptism, the 
queen entertained her court and foreign guests at a grand 
banquet, which was preceded by an exhibition of fireworks 
in Stirling churchyard. During the banquet an amusing 
quarrel arose between the French and English. It so 
happened that the amusements of the evening were chiefly 
conducted by the queen's French servant, de Bastian — a 
name disagreeably memorable in her history, as it was on 
his marriage night that Darnley was murdered. According 
to the grotesque taste of that age, the table containing the 
meat ^vas moved into the hall by concealed machinery, 
preceded by a number of men dressed like satyrs, and 
accompanied by " musicians, clothed like maids, and play- 
ing on all sorts of instruments." The business of the 
satyrs was to make way for the advancing table through 
the guests assembled in the hall. It pleased them, how- 
ever, to perform an extra-official duty, by seizing their tails 
behind, and wagging them in the faces of the crowd. " The 
long-tailed English" was an epithet of contempt applicable 
to that nation from the days of King David II., when we 
know it was applied to a party of them by Black Agnes, at 
the siege of Dunbar. Of course, it w^as natural for them, 
on the present occasion, to conceive that the ludicrous ges- 
ture of the satyrs was a studied insult devised against them 
by the French master of ceremonies ; and, under this im- 
pression, the greater part of them were foolish enough to 
express their resentment by sitting down upon the floor 
behind the table, with their backs turned to the festive 
scene. Mr. Hatton, one of the principal men among them, 
even went the length of telling Sir James Melville, that, 
but for the queen's presence, he would have "put his dagger 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 11 

into the heart of that knave de Bastian/' Mary, who was 
sitting at the time in conversation with the Earl of Bedford, 
turned about on hearing the tumult, but it cost both her 
and the earl a good deal of pains to reassure the English, 
and compose the mighty quarrel which distracted the as- 
semblage. Besides attending the ceremony of the chris- 
tening, the Earl of Bedford had conferences with Queen 
Mary of great delicacy respecting her claim of succession 
to the English crown. He conducted himself on this 
occasion with no less honesty towards that queen, than 
loyalty to his own, and returned, loaded with the presents 
and the thanks of Scotland, to the unimpaired favours of a 
sovereign equally discerning and jealous. From this 
period the Earl of Bedford's services were principally ren- 
dered at the council-table. In 1570 he was honoured with 
a visit from the queen at Chenies, where she remained 
with her court for several days. In 1572, accompanied by 
the principal officers of her court and household, she again 
visited the earl, at his seat of Woburn Abbey. The hos- 
pitality which the earl exercised was such as to have passed 
into a proverb ; the queen herself being accustomed to 
declare, that " whilst some noblemen made many poor by 
oppression, he and Edward Earl of Derby made by their 
liberality all the beggars in her kingdom ;" yet we find 
the Earl of Bedford, upon this occasion making suit to Lord 
Burleigh to manage for him " that her tarriance were not 
above two nights and a day ;" so burdensome even to the 
most generous and noble was the entertainment of that 
numerous train which attended in the wake of this state- 
keeping princess when she made one of her progresses. — 
The earl was employed in the matrimonial negotiation with 
the Duke of Anjou in 1581. His health and constitution 



12 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

now gradually declined, until July, 1585, when his various 
maladies terminated in a gangrene, which he bore with 
Christian patience and resignation. In this peaceful frame 
of mind he is stated like a taper to have worn away, and 
without a gasp or groan to have yielded up his spirit on 
the 28th July, 1585. — His two eldest sons had died in his 
lifetime. The third, Francis, Lord Russell, married Juliana, 
daughter of Sir John Foster, warden of the marches, and 
was killed in an accidental fray on the borders of Scotland 
only one day before the death of his father, leaving issue* 
Edward, third earl. — The Countess of Bedford survived her 
husband many years. At the funeral of Mary Queen of 
Scots she officiated as chief mourner; and died in 1600, at 
the age of 75. 

The character of Francis, Earl of Bedford, is thus drawn 
by Mr. Lodge : — " He loved his country entirely, and de- 
voted himself to it on the only just principles of public ser- 
vice — loyalty to his prince, reverence to religion, and sub- 
mission to the laws. He had talents capable of directing 
the most important state affairs ; but those talents were in 
a manner governed by a noble simplicity of mind, so con- 
trary to the spirit of party and political intrigue, that he 
always declined accepting the great offices which were re- 
peatedly offered to him, choosing to serve his prince rather 
with his person than wdth his counsel, and preferring obe- 
dience, regulated by his own honesty, to that* affectation of 
authority which must occasionally submit to the interests 
and the caprice of colleagues. The vast wealth w-hich he 
inherited in his youth from his father seduced him neither 
into indolence, debauchery, nor pride. His charity was as 
pure as his patriotism, and as free from vanity as that from 
ambition. He seemed to hold his weighty purse but as a 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 13 

trustee for the unfortunate. To conclude this slight sketch, 
in the concise but comprehensive words of Camden, ' he 
was a true follower of religion and virtue !' " 

FAMILY OF FRANCIS, SECOND EARL OF BEDFORD. 

The earl had four sons— Edward, John, Francis, and 
William ; and three daughters — Anne, Elizabeth, and 
Margaret. We shall notice each of them seriatim, 

I. — EDWARD. 

Of Edward, Lord Russell, the earl's eldest son, but few 
particulars are known. He married Jane Sibylla, daughter 
of Sir Richard Morrison. Lord Russell died, without issue, 
in the lifetime of his father, and his young widow married 
Arthur, Baron Grey of Wilton, a brave and honourable 
captain, who, after distinguishing his youth in the Scottish 
wars, served as Lord Deputy of Ireland, where he sup- 
pressed the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond. 

II. — JOHN. 

John, second son, by writ of parliament Baron Russell, 
married 1574, the Lady Hobby, one of the five learned 
daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke. Her first husband was 
Sir Thomas Hobby, who died while on an embassy to 
France in 1566. On that occasion she was honoured with 
a letter of the kindest condolence from Queen Elizabeth. 
On the birth of her first daughter by Lord Russell, the 
Queen stood godmother to the infant, which was named 
after her, Elizabeth. In after years, she appointed her 
(as well as her younger sister Anne) one of her maids of 
honour.* They had also a son named Francis, who died 
in 1580 ; his father survived him but a few years, dying at 
his house in Highgate in 1584, the year before his father 
the earl. 



* See Appendix, Note B. 



14 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

III. — FRANCIS. 

Sir Francis was a youth of high spirit and undaunted 
prowess. His father's office on the Scottish borders drew 
him thither, and he was received into one of the companies 
of Sir John Forster, of Alnwick Abbey, warden of the 
middle marches, whose daughter Juliana he married in 
1571. Into the stirring charms of a border life he entered 
with unusual ardour. In the many border conflicts in 
which he was engaged, he uniformly displayed a bravery 
and contempt of danger which endeared him to the march- 
men under his command. He took a conspicuous share 
in the escalade of Edinburgh Castle, and was committed 
to ward by Sir William Drury, his commander, for his 
rash and precipitate valour. The castle, which was com- 
manded by the brave Kirkaldy, of Grange, yielded next 
day, and its gallant defender was infamously put to death 
in open defiance of the terms of capitulation. In 1575, 
Forster, Sir Francis, and numerous other gentlemen were 
taken prisoners by the Scots, on a sudden fray which arose 
while the wardens of the two countries, with their retainers, 
were met to hold a day of truce for the redress of mutual 
grievances. Sir George Heron, with five-and-twenty of 
the English, perished in this fatal raid, which is imputed 
to treachery on the part of the Scots. Kussell and his 
fellow-prisoners were, however, speedily liberated, with 
ample apologies from the Regent Morton to the English 
Queen. On the 27th July, 1585, another truce-day was 
held between Sir John Forster and Sir Thomas Ker of 
Fernihurst, when the oaths to keep the peace were again 
violated, and the English, to the number of three hundred 
gentlemen, were attacked by no less than three thousand 
Scots. An Englishman being charged with theft, on 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 15 

doubtful evidence, a tumult was suddenly raised, and the 
Scots immediately discharged a shower of bullets, one of 
which wounded Sir Francis Russell, as he was unsheathing 
his sword, after exclaiming to a Scot who had called on 
him to surrender, " that will I never do !" The English 
were put to flight, pursued for four miles on English ground, 
and several taken prisoners. The wound which Sir Francis 
had received proved fatal ; he lingered till the following 
day, and then expired, to the grief of all Northumberland, 
and the extreme indignation of the English Queen. Of 
those who mourned his loss, as the spearmen bore his body 
home to Alnwick, his lady, Juliana Forster, was happily 
not one ; "her sweet deserts," to use the phrase of a con- 
temporary poet who celebrates his fate, had already passed 
from earth ; but the tears of her father and his own re- 
tainers were shed upon his bier ; and the church of Aln- 
wick hearses his remains. This unhappy occurrence took 
place, as already mentioned, on the day before the death 
of his father the earl ; and Edward, the son of Sir Francis, 
succeeded to the title as third Earl of Bedford. 

IV. — WILLIAM. 

Sir William, the fourth son, greatly distinguished liim- 
self in his youth, both in military service, and its mimic 
presentments the tilt and tourney. After assisting in the 
suppression of a rebellion in Ireland, at the head of one 
hundred and fifty horse raised by the English clergy, he 
was sent to Holland with Sir Philip Sidney, under the Earl 
of Leicester ; and on the celebrated field of Zutphen, in 
1586, displayed a valour that carried consternation, rout, 
and havoc, wherever his horse bore him. Naturally tall, 
sinewy, and athletic, his figure, magnified by the mists that 
prevailed upon that noted morning, seemed like a gigantic 



16 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

image, and, joined to the romantic achievements of his arm, 
impressed the superstitious fancies of the Spaniards with 
the belief that they were contending with a more than 
earthly apparition. ** So terribly he charged,'* says Stowe, 
who derived the scene from an eye witness, " that, after he 
had broke his lance, he with his curtle-axe so played his 
part, that the enemy reported him a devil, and no man ; 
for, where he saw six or seven of the foe together, thither 
would he rush, and so apply his weapon as speedily to sepa- 
rate their friendship." A like display of prowess by Lord 
Willoughby, Sir Philip Sidney, and others of the English 
soldiery, completed the fortune of the day, and the Spaniards 
fled from the disastrous conflict. The exultation of Sir 
William, as he returned from the pursuit, was severely 
checked by a rumour of the fatal accident that had befallen 
Sidney. Hastening to the spot where the young hero lay, 
Sir William kissed his hand, and exclaimed with bitter 
tears, "0 ! noble Sir Philip ! never was there man obtained 
hurt more honourably than ye have done, nor any served 
like unto you !" To him, as his dear friend and comrade, 
the dying youth bequeathed his best gilt armour ; and Sir 
William was appointed by the queen to the governorship 
of Flushing, vacant by his lamented death. On the inva- 
sion of the Spanish armada, Sir William commanded the 
forces of the west, but the dispersion of the fleet Jeft this 
office a sinecure. In 1593, he was appointed Lord Deputy 
of Ireland, where his military services w^ere called forth 
into full exertion. He returned in triumph in 1597. In 
1603, he was created to the peerage by King James, as 
Baron Russell of Thornhaugh ; and died 9th August, 1613; 
the Christian preparations which he made for his last seri- 
ous conflict being more instructive than many homilies, 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 17 

and more glorious to his memory than the previous recital 
of his earthly victories and battles. He married Elizabeth, 
daughter and heir of Henry Long, of Stringay, Cambridge- 
shire, who died two years before him. They left a son, 
Francis, who afterwards succeeded as fourth Earl of 
Bedford. 

V. — ANNE, COUNTESS OF WARWICK. 

Anne, the eldest daughter, was married in 1565, as already 
mentioned, to Ambrose Dudley, fourth, but at length eldest 
surviving son and heir of the Duke of Northumberland ; 
brother of Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Leicester, and 
of Guildford, husband of Lady Jane Grey. She was his 
third wife, he having been already twice a widower. While 
yet young, he had been naturally associated with his father 
in the exaltation of Lady Jane, and had in consequence 
been attainted and received sentence of death. After a 
short imprisonment in the Tower, however, Mary granted 
him a pardon for life, and received him into favour. He 
distinguished himself in 1557, at the celebrated battle of 
St. Quintin ; and before the accession of Elizabeth, obtained 
by act of parliament the restitution of his estates. He 
received from Elizabeth a grant of lands in Leicestershire, 
and was made master of the ordnance, baron of Kingston- 
Lisle, and Earl of Warwick. Being appointed governor 
of Havre, with a garrison of three thousand men, he de- 
fended his post, which was besieged by the Constable 
Montmorenci, with unshrinking resolution, nor did he 
render it at last but at Elizabeth's special order, and on 
the most honourable conditions. During the treaty, having 
appeared without his armour on the ramparts to speak to 
a distinguished French officer, a villain fired at him from 
beneath, and wounded him in the leg with a poisoned bul- 

c 2 



18 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

let, a misfortune which troubled him during the remainder 
of his life. It was during this siege that the queen ad- 
dressed to him that affectionate laconic note, in which she 
protests, that for the presence of so faithful a servant she 
would willingly part with her most needful finger, and 
would rather drink out of an ashen cup than that he should 
fail of succour. He was among the peers appointed for 
the trial of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots. 
He was a nobleman of unblemished character, and was 
popularly known as the " good Earl of Warwick." To- 
wards the conclusion of his life the misery of the incurable 
wound in his leg gradually increased, and at length became 
intolerable and threatened mortification. He was in con- 
sequence obliged to submit to amputation of the injured 
limb. He died in 1590, being about sixty years of age. 
Lady "Warwick was distinguished by the highest accom- 
plishments, and was the closest female intimate of Queen 
Elizabeth to the hour of her death. She survived her 
royal mistress but a twelvemonth, expiring 9th February^ 
1604, to the regret of numbers to whom her virtues and 
good offices had long endeared her. Her body was em- 
balmed, and deposited in the vault of the church at Chenies, 
where she frequently resided, and where her memory is yet 
held in veneration, as she devised an annual endowment 
for the maintenance of ten poor widows there. She was 
remarkable alike for unfeigned piety and extensive bene- 
volence. 

VI. — ELIZABETH, COUNTESS OF BATH. 

Elizabeth, second daughter, was married in 1582, at St. 
Stephen's Church, Exeter, of which city she was a native, 
to William Bourchier, Earl of Bath : the citizens testify- 
ing their interest in the event by the present of a basin and 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 19 

ewer of silver, richly gilt and decorated. A large caval- 
cade was also in attendance to escort them from the altar ; 
and the rest of the day was devoted to a round of entertain- 
ments and public diversions, which gave to that ancient and 
venerable city the gaiety and life of an Italian carnival. 
We find little else recorded of Lady Bath beyond some in- 
cidental allusions in the writings of her niece, Anne Clifford. 

VII. — MARGARET, COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND. 

Margaret, the youngest daughter, was married to George 
Clifford, son of the Earl of Cumberland. The match was 
suggested by Leicester, and approved by the parents of 
both, when the parties themselves were yet in infancy ; the 
young Lord Clifford being but seven years old and Lady 
Margaret two years younger, when they were betrothed to 
each other. Of the early life and character of this lady, 
some particulars occur in the memoirs of her daughter, 
Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke : — " The blessed 
and religious lady, Margaret Russell, was born about the 
6th July, 1560, in her father's house at Exeter, which house 
was once a nunnery ; and by reason that her mother, Mar- 
garet, Countess of Bedford, died of the small-pox, in 
Woburn House, when she was but a year old ; she, the 
then little lady, Margaret Russell, was by her father sent 
to her mother's sister, Mrs. Alice Elmers, of Lilford, in 
Northamptonshire, to be bred up there some seven years ; 
and from there, when about eight years old, she was brought 
home, to live in her father's house, under the government 
of her mother-in-law, till she came to be married. She w^as 
married to George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, the 
24th June, in 1577, in St. Mary Overy's Church, in South- 
wark, she being then near seventeen years old, and he near 
nineteen; his sister, the Lady Frances Clifford, being 



20 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

married to Philip, Lord Wharton, at the same time and 
place : it being so great a marriage that Queen Elizabeth 
honoured it with her presence. A little after her marriage 
she went with her husband down into the north, to Skipton 
Castle, in Craven, to live there with him, and his mother 
and their friends, for the most part of eight years. This 
Margaret Russell was endowed with many perfections of 
mind and body. She was naturally of a high spirit, though 
she tempered it well by grace ; having a very well-favoured 
face, with sweet and quick grey eyes, and of a comely per- 
sonage. She was of a graceful behaviour, which she in- 
creased the more by her being civil and courteous to all 
ranks of people. She had a discerning spirit, both into the 
disposition of human creatures and natural causes, and into 
the affairs of the world. She had a greaf, sharp, natural 
wit, so as there were few worthy sciences but she had some 
insight into them ; for though she had no language but her 
own, yet weie there few books of worth translated into 
English but she read them ; whereby that excellent mind 
of hers was much enriched, which even by nature was en- 
dowed with the seeds of the four moral virtues — prudence, 
justice, fortitude, and temperance. She was a lover of the 
study and practice of alchemy (chemistry) by which she 
found out excellent medicines, that did much good to many. 
She delighted in distilling of waters and other cjiemical 
extractions, for she had some knowledge in most kind of 
minerals, herbs, flowers, and plants. And certainly the 
infusion which she had from above, of many excellent 
knowledges and virtues, both divine and human, did bridle 
and keep under that great spirit of hers, and caused her to 
have the sweet peace of the heavenly and quiet mind in the 
midst of all her griefs and troubles, which were many. She 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 21 

was dearly beloved by those of her friends and acquaintance 
that had excellent wits, and were worthy and good ; so as 
towards her latter end she would often say that the kindness 
of her friends towards her had been one of the most com- 
fortable parts of her life, and particularly of her husband's 
two sisters. She was also very happy in the dear love and 
affection of her eldest and excellent sister, Anne Russell, 
Countess of Warwick, (who being almost thirteen years 
older than herself, was a kind of a mother to her,) as well 
as in that of their middle sister. Countess of Bath ; for these 
three sisters in those times were the most remarkable ladies 
for their greatness and goodness of any three sisters in the 
kingdom.'* 

George Clifford was the eldest son of Henry, second Earl 
of Cumberland. His father dying in 1569, when he was 
only eleven years of age, he was placed in ward to Francis, 
second Earl of Bedford. He had all that susceptibility of 
imagination and ardent enthusiasm which leads to brilliant 
and romantic undertakings ; and he embarked, heart and 
soul, in those maritime attacks upon the power of Spain, 
which under Drake and others were then the rage of the 
day. He had fitted out a little fleet so early as 1586, on a 
voyage of discovery and crusade against the Spaniaids ,• 
commanded in 1588 a ship in the fleet which destroyed the 
Spanish armada, and distinguished himself equally by his 
bravery and his skill in the various engagements by which 
that great work was accomplished, particularly in the last 
action which was fought off Calais. He afterwards engaged 
with a second fleet of his own furnishing, in a series of sea 
voyages that have justly placed his name among the first 
patrons of enterprise in the annals of maritime adventure. 
Sailing, in June, 1589, for the West Indies, he took the 



22 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

rich town of Fayal, in the Azores, with all its stores and 
ordnance ; and, after several desperate engagements and 
severe privations, returned in December, seamed with scars, 
but rich wdth booty, having sent home before him no fewer 
than eight-and-twenty ships, with spoil to the amount of 
more than £20,000. Shortly after his return he went down 
to Skipton Castle, on a visit to his lady. Time had passed 
but rudely with his amiable countess almost from the period 
of their marriage ; for the earl unhappily became fascinated 
with the charms of some other lady about court, which was 
followed by the usual results of irregular attachment-— first 
neglect, afterwards estrangement, and to the injured party 
deep inward discontent, if not open indignation and re- 
proach. To a woman of the countess's quick sense of moral 
feeling, the guilty conduct of a husband to whom she w^as 
undoubtedly attached, infinitely enhanced the pain which 
she suffered from his infidelity ; and her health became so 
much impaired that at the end of six years she was threa- 
tened with consumption. Her emaciated form and mental 
suffering touched the bosom of the careless earl, and a re- 
newal of his first assiduities arrested the ravage of disease, 
and restored to her the animation and the hue of health. 
In this interval of restored confidence, which comprised 
about ten years of her existence, the countess became the 
mother of two sons, who both died precisely at the same 
age of five years and eight months ; and of a daughter, 
Anne, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery, 
who afterwards became noted as the dauntless claimant of 
her alienated rights, but affable, generous, and hospitable 
in the halls of her progenitors, and mistress of all hearts 
in the districts gladdened by her bounty. 
The simple enjoyments and quiet of a country life were 



OF THE HOUSE OF EUSSELL. 23 

but little in unison with the Earl of Cumberland's restless 
and romantic spirit. Being bent upon fresh sea adventures, 
he in April, 1591, took his family to London, and set sail, in 
May, for the Mediterranean. Being disappointed, by the 
death of his sons, in his hopes of perpetuating the name of 
Clifford, he grew less scrupulous in the indulgence of his 
favourite pursuits. The building and fitting out of vessels 
for nine successive voyages, led to many large alienations 
of his property. Being also champion to the queen, he 
spent vast sums in maintaining his beau-ideal of that cha-- 
racter in revels, tilts, and other festivities. The prizes 
which he took in his naval expeditions, though often of 
immense value, did not in the end compensate for the sacri- 
fices which he had made. The queen claimed a great por- 
tion of the proceeds of his earlier captures ; and in his last 
expedition in 1598, when he took and burnt the capital of 
Porto Rico, he suffered many accidents and losses. The 
countess's friends obtained from him a settlement on her 
of his Westmoreland estates ; but he devised to his brother 
Francis all his other castles, lands, and honours, from his 
daughter, which were only to return to her in default of a 
male heir to his brother ; a disposal which led to long and 
expensive law-suits, and rekindled between him and his 
high-spirited lady the sparkles of their former discord. 
The bond of confidence was thus afresh snapt between 
them, and was reunited only in his last moments. That 
event took place in the Duchy-house of Savoy, on the 30th 
October, 1605. The countess and her daughter were at- 
tendant on him during his illness, which brought with it 
some serious and compunctious feelings for his past do- 
mestic errors. Before his decease he expressed with much 
affection to his wife and child a strong impression that his 



24 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

brother would die without male issue, and his daughter 
thereby become the sole possessor of his lands — a presen- 
timent which was realised in 1643. The earl, says Dr. 
Whitaker, " was a great, but unamiable man. His story 
admirably illustrates the difference between greatness and 
contentment, between fame and virtue. If we trace him 
in the public history of his times, we see nothing but the 
accomplished courtier, the skilful navigator, the intrepid 
commander, the disinterested patriot ; but if we follow him 
into his family, we are instantly struck with the indifferent 
and unfaithful husband, the negligent and thoughtless 
parent." He was buried at Skipton, the chief seat of his 
family. — The countess survived him upwards of ten years. 
Her interesting daughter gives this recital of her latter 
days :— " Upon the 2nd of April, 1616, I took my last 
leave of my dear and blessed mother, with many tears and 
much sorrow to us both, some quarter of a mile from 
Brougham Castle, in the open air,* after which time she 
and I never saw one another : for then I went away out of 
Westmoreland to London. A little before her death, when 
she was in some doubt and fear that through strength of 
power her daughter's ancient inheritance might be wrested 
from her, she would often say, to comfort her heart, * The 
earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is.' In the month 
following, that blessed mother of mine died, to my unspeak- 
able grief, myself at the time of her death being ih Kent ; 
the remembrance of whose sweet and excellent virtues 
hath been the chief companion of my thoughts ever since 
she departed out of this world. She died, this blessed 
lady, christianly and willingly, the 24th day of May, in 
161 G, in the same chamber in Brougham Castle wherein 

* See Appendix, Note C. 



OF THE HOUSE OF KUSSELL. 25 

her husband was born, being about fifty-six years old. 
She often repeated these words a little before her death, 
'that she desired to be dissolved, and to be with our 
Saviour Jesus Christ, in the heavenly Jerusalem.' " 

ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, &C. 

This distinguished lady was born 30th January, 1590. 
It was her good fortune, as we have seen, to be left to the 
care of her mother, by whom the more important part of 
her education was entrusted to Samuel Daniel, a poet of no 
mean fame in those days. From him she acquired a taste 
for history and poetry, and a fondness for literary compo- 
sition, which she indulged to a great extent, but without 
the intention of publishing. Her chief work is a summary 
of the circumstances of her own life. Her picture of herself 
in her youth is too curious to be omitted. " I was," says 
she, "very happy in my first constitution, both in mind 
and body ; both for internal and external endowments ; for 
never was there a child more equally resembling both 
father and mother than myself. The colour of mine eyes 
was black, like my father's, and the form and aspect of 
them was quick and lively like my mother's. The hair of 
my head was brown, and very thick, and so long that it 
reached to the call of my legs when I stood upright : with 
a peak of hair on my forehead, and a dimple on my chin. 
Like my father, full cheeks; and round face, like my 
mother ; and an exquisite shape of body resembling my 
father. But now time and age have long since ended all 
those beauties, which are to be compared to the grass of 
the field. For now, when I caused these memorables of 
myself to be written, I have passed the sixty-third year of 
my age. And, though I say it, the perfections of my mind 
were much above those of my body : I had a strong and 



26 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

copious memory; a sound judgment, and a discerning 
spirit ; and so much of a strong imagination in me, as that 
many times even my dreams and apprehensions beforehand 
proved to be true ; so that old Mr. John Denham, a great 
astronomer that sometimes lived in my father's house, 
would often say, that I had much in me in nature to shew 
that the sweet influences of the Pleiads and the bands of 
Orion, mentioned in Job, were powerful both at my con- 
ception and nativity!" She was married to Richard 
Sackville, son of the second Earl of Dorset, 27th Feb., 
1609; and but two days after her marriage the father of 
her husband died, and she became Countess of Dorset. 
The earl was a man of lively parts, and licentious life, and 
probably a polite and negligent husband. After his death, 
and when she had passed the age of forty, she was married 
to Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. In neither of her 
marriages did this lady find the happiness to which her 
deserts so eminently entitled her; being subjected in both 
" to many crosses and contradictions" — with her first lord 
from resisting his prodigal extravagance, and from the 
contentious efforts which he made, to induce her to sell 
her rights in the contested lands of her inheritance, a 
measure to which she never would consent — with her 
second husband, a man of brutal manners and temper, 
because she would neither compel her youngest daughter. 
Lady Isabella Sackville, to sacrifice herself in marriage to 
one of his youngest sons by his first wife, nor relinquish 
her interest in £5000, which she held as part of her marriage 
portion. Whilst touching with amiable forbearance, in 
her memoirs, on their respective injuries and caprices, she 
acknowledges that "in both their lifetimes, the marble 
pillars of Knowle in Kent, and Wilton in Wiltshire, were 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 27 

to her oftentimes but the gay arbours of anguish, insomuch 
as a wise man (the Earl of Bedford) that knew the insides 
of my fortune, would often say that I lived in both these 
my lords* great families, as the river Rhone runs through 
the lake of Geneva without mingling any part of its streams 
with that lake, for I gave myself wholly to retiredness as 
much as I could in both, and made good books and virtuous 
thoughts my companions, which can never discern affliction, 
nor be daunted when it unjustly happens; and by a happy 
genius I overcame all those troubles, the (former) prayers 
of my blessed mother helping me therein." In 1638, when 
but just recovering from an almost fatal sickness, we find 
her writing to the Earl of Bedford to interpose with her 
lord for permission to her to come up to London, though 
but for ten days or a fortnight at the most, to attend to some 
of her affairs. " For I dare not," she says with a simple 
earnestness, "venture it without his leave, lest he should 
take that occasion to turn me out of this house, as he did 
out of Whitehall, and then I shall not know where to put 
my head." She was at length obliged to separate wholly 
from him^ and his death in 1649 relieved her from her 
thraldom. She then retired to her own superb estates in 
the north, where she cultivated a princely hospitality, 
giving loose to a profusion at once magnificent and 
economical, and adorning the neighbourhood of her resi- 
dence with splendid monuments of her liberality. She 
restored Skipton castle, and church, and five other castles 
and mansions of her ancestors, which had become dilapi- 
dated, to their pristine grandeur and convenience. Re- 
moving from castle to castle, she diffused plenty and 
happiness around her; her house was a school for the 
young, and a retreat for the aged; an asylum for the 



28 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

persecuted, a college for the learned, and a pattern for 
all. She had the happiness to live very long, with few 
infirmities, and died at her castle at Brougham, 22d March, 
1675, aged 85. This great countess had by Lord Dorset 
three sons, who died infants, and two daughters, who 
married the Earls of Thanet and Northampton. By the 
Earl of Pembroke she had no children. Her portrait, in 
Lodge, is a perfect gem. — The length of this notice has 
compelled us to abridge details in w^hich we should other- 
wise have delighted to indulge. "Peace to thine ashes," 
sweet Anne Clifford ! 

EDWARD, THIRD EARL OF BEDFORD. 

Edward, the son of Sir Francis Russell, was little more 
than eleven years old when he succeeded to the earldom. 
He was placed under the wardship of his aunt, Lady 
Warwick. Without reflecting upon the discretion or good 
sense of that lady, it may be questioned whether a woman's 
guardianship was not, on the whole, unfavourable to the 
young earl; and whether, had it been committed to Sir 
William Russell, or to any other personage conversant as 
well with the camp as with the court, he would not have 
given proofs of a more vigorous and active spirit. His 
knightly education, indeed, could not have been wholly 
neglected, as on more than one occasion he shone with the 
chivalric Earl of Cumberland in tilts and tourneys held in 
honour of the virgin Queen ; but, with these exceptions, he 
appears to have taken no eager interest or part in either 
the round of court amusements or the stir of court affairs. 
When the Earl of Essex sallied out on his hasty insurrec- 
tion, the Earl of Bedford, with the Lord Cromwell and 
other peers, accompanied him on his w^ay to the city ; on 
discovering, however, the real nature of Essex's designs, 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 29 

he lost no time in disengaging himself from such dangerous 
company. In a letter to the council he says — " I severed 
myself from him at a cross-street end, and taking water, 
came back to my house, where I made no delay, but with 
all convenient speed put myself and followers in readiness ; 
and with the best strength I could then presently make, 
being about the number of twenty horse, I went toward the 
court for her majesty's service." 

In 1592 we find the young earl pressing his suit with a 
daughter of Lord Chandos, but insuperable difficulties 
intervening, the negotiation was broken off, and the lady 
afterwards became the bride of his cousin Francis, the son 
of Sir William Russell. He did not long brood over his 
disappointment, for on the 12th December, 1594, he was 
married to Lucy, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John 
Harrington of Exton, at his seat at Stepney — a lady not 
more celebrated for beauty and vivacity of wit than for her 
generosity to men of genius, the taste which she carried 
into all her pursuits, and the success with which she 
cultivated some of those lighter sciences that minister to 
taste its most refined gratification. On the accession of 
James, she was appointed by the queen, Anne of Denmark, 
to her privy chamber ; whilst her mother, the Lady 
Harrington, was intrusted with the education of the 
Princess Elizabeth. The desire for such appointments, 
among the ladies of the court, gave rise to endless intrigues. 
The Earl of Worcester writes to Lord Shrewsbury — " All 
the rest are for the private chamber, when they are not shut 
out : for many times the doors are locked. But the plotting 
and malice amongst them is such, that I think envy hath 
tied an invisible snake about most of their necks, to sting 
one another to death !'* Lady Rich, however, appears for 

D 2 



so SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

a time to have been the principal favourite. " Now," says 
Anne Clifford, "was my Lady Rich grown great with the 
queen, insomuch as my Lady of Bedford was something 
out with her, and when she came to Hampton Court, was 
entertained but even indifferently." Lady Bedford, how- 
ever, soon emerged from the obscuration cast by the shadow 
of the Lady Rich, and again shone foremost in the court 
festivities. She was the "crowning rose" in that garland 
of English beauty which the Spanish ambassador desired 
Madame Beaumont, the lady of the French ambassador, 
to bring with her to an entertainment ; the three others 
being Lady Rich, Lady Susan Vere, and Lady Dorothy 
Sidney; and, says the Lady Arabella Stuart, "great cheer 
they had." Lady Bedford, as well as the queen, also took 
a prominent part in the masques which were performed at 
court, and which were chiefly from the magic pen of Ben 
Jonson. In 1612 she was seized with an alarming illness, 
but by the 14th of the following February was so far 
recovered as to take that station at the marriage of the 
Princess Elizabeth which her rank prescribed. She ap- 
peared in the magnificent procession, robed, like the rest 
of the attendant married countesses in white satin, rich 
with broidered work, and glittering with pearls and precious 
stones. The bride herself was refulgent as a heroine of old 
romance, a crown of glowing gold upon her head, " made 
imperial by the pearls and diamonds placed thereon, which 
were so thick beset, that they stood like shining pinnacles 
upon her amber-coloured hair." Lady Bedford also played 
an important part in assisting George Villiers, afterwards 
Duke of Buckingham, to supplant the favourite Carr in the 
royal favour. She was instrumental also in promoting the 
marriage of the Lord Hay to Lady Lucy Percy, daughter 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 31 

of the Earl of Northumberland. In 1619 she had to lament 
the loss of her royal mistress, and, on this event taking 
place, she retired to her private villa, after sixteen years' 
attendance at court. Besides being forward in advancing 
the happiness of many youthful lovers, we find her in 1625, 
actively engaged in promoting the marriage of James, Lord 
Strange, afterwards seventh Earl of Derby, with Charlotte 
de la Tremouille. Indeed she seems to have engaged con 
amove in the occupation of a match-maker. In her retire- 
ment at Twickenham, she received the more familiar visits 
of the gay, the busy, and the enterprising of her time, 
gathered wisdom and enjoyment from her hours of let- 
tered ease, and indulged in the society of the poets whose 
productions she admired and whose labours she munificently 
encouraged. She pursued also the study of medallic history 
and the collection of ancient coins, and she greatly excelled 
in horticulture : her garden at Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, 
being pronounced by Sir William Temple, the most beau- 
tiful and perfect, and altogether the sweetest place he had 
ever seen either in England or in foreign countries.* In 
some of these occupations it is probable that the earl 
participated, although the equal tenor of his unambitious 
course has attracted little comment from contemporary 
writers. He died 3d May, 1627, and was privately interred 
at Chenies. The health of the countess was at the same 
time declining, and she expired on the 26th of the same 
month, t and was interred at Exton, in Rutlandshire, the 
parish register of w^hich indicates the date of 1627. A 
singular fate has attended her memory. After having 

* See Appendix, Note D. 
t Mr. Lodge has fallen into an unaccountable error in stating that this 
lady ** survived her husband for many years, but the date of her death 
is unknown." In this blunder he has been followed by the editor of 
Sharpens Peerage. 



32 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

passed with unblemished reputation and celebrity, through 
all the phases of a court by no means the most guarded 
and discreet, and carried with her into retirement the 
friendship and affection of the wise, the learned, and the 
good, she has been aspersed with little ceremony by 
Grainger and Pennant, the latter of whom calls her " that 
fantastic lady," and speaks scornfully of the earl, her 
husband, because he endured her. They died without 
issue. 

FRANCIS, FOURTH EARL OF BEDFORD. 

Edward, Earl of Bedford, was succeeded by his cousin 
Francis, the only son of the heroic William, baron of 
Thornhaugh. He had, at the age of nine years, ac- 
companied his father into Ireland, where he remained till 
his recall, being then about twelve years old. He was 
knighted by King James in 1607, and in the following 
year was united to the object of his affections, Catherine, 
one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Giles Brydges, 
third Lord Chandos of Sudeley. In the happy privacy of 
lettered and domestic ease, his early years of manhood had 
flown by with scarce a record. He had received, at one of 
the inns of court, the education of a lawyer, which had 
induced, upon a mind naturally strong, inductive, and 
sagacious, a habit of patient thought and close investiga- 
tion. He applied himself to the examination of the various 
political and religious controversies that were then under 
debate. The discussions in the later parliaments of James, 
to which, after his father's decease, he was summoned as a 
baron, had strongly rivetted his attention. He attached 
himself then to the society of such men as Elliot, Selden, 
and Sir Robert Cotton ; and directed his study to the pre- 
cedents, the usages, and power of former parliaments. 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 33 

He was one of the thirty -two peers of the more ancient 
nobility who signed the noted petition to the king in 1621, 
complaining that the privileges of the English hereditary 
peerage had been violated by the precedence given to the 
many English peers with Irish and Scottish titles, which 
James had recently created. This proceeding excited the 
strong displeasure of the king, whose maxims of indefeasible 
and sacred right became with Charles, his successor, an 
innate, fixed, and constant principle of action. In the 
contests between the latter and his commons the earl was 
not an unconcerned spectator. He engaged with warmth 
in defence of the liberty of the subject, and became the 
leader of its advocates in the House of Peers. When the 
petition of right came before the house, the earl distin- 
guished himself so conspicuously in its favour as to attract 
the attention and displeasure of the king, who suddenly- 
commanded him away from parliament to his distant 
lieutenancy of Devonshire, where he was detained till the 
session was prorogued. He was afterwards prosecuted in 
the Star Chamber, with several others, for their liberal 
opinions, but it was found prudent to drop these violent 
proceedings without pressing them to an issue. 

He was no sooner freed from the above prosecution 
than he embarked in the project for draining those fens 
called the Great Level, and afterwards in honour of him, 
the Bedford Level, which extend into the counties of 
Northampton, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Norfolk, and 
Lincoln. Of that stupendous work he was the principal 
undertaker, and in 1630, 95,000 acres of the inundated 
land were allotted to him, and to the few whom his 
example had encouraged to take inferior shares in the 
enterprise. In the autumn of 1637, the earl had expended 



34 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

on it the immense sum of £100,000. The work was 
suspended by the civil wars; but the undertaking was 
resumed in 1649, by his son and successor, and by 1653, it 
was at length completely accomplished. 

In the meantime the public discontents had risen to a 
height that threatened the most serious consequences to 
the monarchy and nation. The Earl of Bedford, notwith- 
standing his liberal principles, was, according to Lord 
Clarendon, " too wise a man, and of too great a fortune, 
to wish the subversion of the government." He carried 
himself towards the king with the most profound respect, 
and with all professions of loyalty and zeal for his service ; 
and contrived to live in a decent and grave familiarity 
with the ministers, while in parliament he decried their 
measures and their motives with the utmost eagerness. 
Charles, who possessed more penetration than any of his 
ministers, secretly determined to form a new administra- 
tion, composed chiefly of the most important men in the 
opposition party, and to place the Earl of Bedford at their 
head. In the meantime the earl conducted with the most 
active assiduity the affairs of his party, in which he pos- 
sessed more authority and was trusted with more confidence 
than any other of its leaders. He had the chief manage- 
ment of the treaty with the Scottish commissioners at 
Ripon, in 1640; and in 1641, was sworn of the king's 
privy council, to the infinite joy of the people, together 
with Hertford, Essex, Warwick, and others of the same 
party. These noblemen appear, during the short time in 
which they exercised their appointment, to have endea- 
voured to moderate the councils of the king. When the 
Earl of Strafford was impeached, the Earl of Bedford 
promised his best efforts to induce the more violent of 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 35 

Strafford's enemies to be satisfied with a less bitter penalty 
than death ; and to procure the revenue of the monarch to 
be settled as amply as that of any of his predecessors on 
the throne, by the establishment of the excise. This 
design, however, was suddenly frustrated by the earl's 
death. In the midst of his negociations with Charles, he 
was attacked, on the 1st or 2d of May, 1641, by a virulent 
small-pox, which terminated his life on the 9th of that 
month, the very day on which the king, by commission, 
passed the bill of attainder against Strafford. Thus died 
Francis, known to his contemporaries by the title of " the 
wise Earl of Bedford." The House of Lords, on the fol- 
lowing day, recorded on its journals their sense of the 
great loss they had sustained; and on the day of his 
funeral, most of the House of Peers with their servants 
attended at Bedford House, to the number of three hundred 
coaches, to accompany the body to its last home. He was 
buried at Chenies, where a stately monument is erected to 
his memory. His countess survived him till 1657, when 
she was laid beside him in the same depository. 

FAMILY OF FRANCIS, FOURTH EARL OF BEDFORD. 

The earl had four sons and four daughters, whose 
fortunes we shall briefly trace. 

I. — WILLIAM. 

William, the eldest, succeeded him in the family honours* 
The particulars of his history will be found below. 

II. — FRANCIS. 

Francis, the second son, married Catherine, daughter of 
William,Lord Grey of Wark, widow of SirEdward Moseley, 
bart., and of the Lord North and Grey. He had no offspring 
by this lady, and died at Paris, in 1641, a month before his 



36 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

father. This event alFected the old earl deeply. On 
receiving the tidings, he informed Dr. Cademan, one of 
his physicians, " that four fair oaks of his had lately been 
blown down, as it were altogether; and on this subject 
made so moving a lament, as to prove that their removal 
took deep root in his thoughts.'' He accordingly sickened 
and died, as we have already related. 

III. — JOHN. 

John, the third son, was bred to military service. The 
earl had endeavoured to negotiate a marriage for him with 
Anne, the youthful daughter of Sir Robert Lovett, who 
had been married to his cousin Edward, Earl of Bath, but 
was now a widow. But a rival suitor appeared, in the 
person of Henry Bourchier, the new Earl of Bath ; and 
the lady's fancy wavered between Mr. John Russell's 
merits, and a secret preference for his elder brother Francis. 
Lord Bedford, however, " would not marry his son Frank 
to a demurring, though he would have ventured his third 
son to have argued it ;" and so the affair fell through ; 
Lord Bedford remarking — "it is a country-business ob- 
servation, that you must not put warm eggs under a sick 
hen !" Mr. John Russell is afterwards described by Count 
Grammont, as being an admirer of " La belle Hamilton," 
whom the count himself afterwards married. Mr. Russell 
commanded a regiment for the king during the civil wars, 
was wounded at the battle of Naseby, and served with 
great reputation in many other actions of the time. On 
the Restoration, he was made colonel of the first regiment 
of guards, and died, unmarried, in 1681, at the age of 69. 

IV. — EDWARD. 

Edward, the youngest son, married Penelope, widow of 
Sir William Brooke, and daughter of Sir Moses Hill, of 



OF THE HOUSE OE RUSSELL. 87 

Hillsborough Castle, Ireland, and ancestor to the present 
Marquis of Downshire, By her he had five sons and two 
daughters. His second son, Edward, was one of the great 
ornaments of his age and country, subsequently better 
known under the name of Admiral Russell. The admiral 
distinguished himself at the battle of La Hogue, 1692, and 
is the centre figure in West's picture in commemoration of 
that event. In 1697, having by his diligence prevented an 
invasion by James II., he was created Baron Russell of 
Shingay, and Earl of Orford; but dying without issue in 
1727, the title became extinct. 

V. — CATHERINE, LADY BROOKE. 

The earl had four daughters, Catherine, Anne, Margaret, 
and Diana ; all of whom rivetted regard or engaged ad- 
miration by their personal attractions, though varying 
considerably in their style of beauty. From their portraits 
preserved at Woburn Abbey, their characteristic distinc- 
tions may, with but little aid from fancy, be clearly and 
significantly traced. Catherine, the eldest, born in 1614, 
appears first at the age of thirteen, a large ruff encircling 
her neck, and setting off" to great advantage a countenance 
full of gentleness and calm reflection. Her auburn hair, 
thrown back in perfect plainness, is behind fastened with 
a sprig of laurel. In the full maturity of womanhood she 
is again presented to us in a dark costume of almost 
puritanical severity, which, notwithstanding, well comports 
with the regular features of her oval face, and an expres- 
sion of great simplicity of character — the placid gentle- 
ness of earlier years settled into a composed and dignified 
sedateness. But for the bunch of flowers at her breast, 
she might be deemed a recluse or nun. She was married, 
at the age of fomteen, to Robert Greville, second Lord 

E 



S8 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

Brooke, then recently returned from his continental travels^. 
He had been adopted as a son, in default of offspring, by 
his cousin, Fulke, Lord Brooke, Sir Philip Sidney's well- 
known literary friend, who conferred upon him an educa- 
tion well befitting the title and inheritance to which he 
destined' him. To these Sir Robert had the regret to be 
prematurely called, by the assassination of his kinsman 
in 1628.* The political sentiments entertained by Lord 
Brooke were in unison with those of the Earl of Bedford. 
His ardent love of civil and religious liberty, imbibed 
during his travels in Germany and Switzerland, led him 
to view with indignation and impatience the rapid progress 
of the monarchy towards despotism, and to take a promi- 
nent part with his compatriots in curbing its career, t 
The date of Lady Brooke's death is entirely unknown. 

VI. — ANNE, COUNTESS OF BRISTOL. 

Anne, the second daughter, was born in 1615. Her 
countenance, symmetrical in all its features, transparent 
in its tints, and illuminated with eyes that gave its expres- 
sion somewhat of an imperial, but by no means an impe- 
rious character, exhibits a luxuriant beauty sublimed 
above her sisters, by the superior intellect beaming on her 
forehead. Her auburn hair, disposed on each side of her 
face in a multitude of ringlets, is bound in a Grecian knot 
behind with strings of pearl. She is habited in a drapery 
of blue, and would appear likely to have captivated at the 
very first sight the affections of that extraordinary noble- 
man to whom she came to be united. George Digby, the 
son of the Earl of Bristol, who was ambassador in Spain, 
when the Duke of Buckingham and Prince Charles made 
their romantic journey thither, had very early in life given 
* See Appendix, Note E. t See Appendix, Note F. 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 39 

proofs of varied talent. When his father lay a prisoner 
in the Tower, the young Lord Digby (then only twelve 
years old) presented a petition in his behalf at the bar of 
the Commons, with an appropriate speech, the modest 
confidence of which, in connexion with his extreme youth, 
graceful person, and ingenuous features, excited no small 
admiration. He was distinguished at Oxford by his 
attainments in every walk of literature, and returned from 
his travels the most accomplished young man of this, or 
perhaps of any other nation j a distinction to which the 
beauty of his person, and the winning grace of his deport- 
ment gave peculiar lustre. It is at this period of his 
popularity and promise that he is depicted, with his bro- 
ther-in-law Lord Russell, by the unrivalled pencil of 
Vandyck, in a painting at Althorp, which can never be 
forgotten by those w^ho have once seen it.* The retired 
life which his father, after his liberation, found it desirable 
to lead, proved of eminent advantage to Lord Digby ; for, 
finding no footing at court, he w^ent down to Sherborne 
Castle, where he cultivated an extensive acquaintance 
with the men of quality and talents who resorted thither 
for the earl's society. He gave his leisure hours there 
exclusively to books and study, the intenseness of which 
was attested by his acquisitions in the abstruse branches 
of philosophy, his deep acquaintance with the fathers, 
and his ow^n controversial writings. With the poets of his 
own and ancient times he was intimately conversant, and 
he excelled in every walk of art and science to which his 
inclination wandered. Such was Lord Digby at the time 
of which we write; his brilliant qualities the theme of 
every tongue. Later in life, when he engaged in the 
* A tine engraving from this portrait will be found iu Lodge, vol. 8. 



40 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

tumult of public affairs, he suffered himself to be borne 
hither and thither by the current, at the mercy of every 
new tide of thought, or fluctuation o ambition ; hence his 
whole mind, as well as conduct, appeared full of shining 
inconsistencies. Still through every phase of character, 
his engaging personal qualities never failed to conciliate 
affection, even when they failed to shield from condemna- 
tion the errors into which he was betrayed.* 

VII. — MARGARET, COUNTESS OF CARLISLE. 

Margaret, the third daughter, was born in 1618. Her 
features were cast in a yet finer mould of form than Lady 
Bristol's, with somewhat less strength of character in their 
expression ; but this disparity was more than compensated 
by the ineffable sweetness of her eyes, and the contour of 
her lips, which breathed an unaffected air of half-angelic 
goodness. There was in Lady Bristol's aspect that which 
might seem to challenge admiration : the repose of Lady 
Margaret's spoke of feminine reserve and delicacy, regu- 
lating and giving dignity to a spirit that appeared "to love 
whate'er it looked upon." There was less power of thought 
enthroned upon her forehead, but in concert with the 
language of her eyes and lips, it beamed with a pure, a 
quiet, and a happy beauty that would assuredly realise 
every promise which it made to a virtuous taste or an 
enamoured fancy. Her hair, of rather a darker tint than 
that of her two sisters, hung in long ringlets on her neck> 
enwreathed with a few simple flowers that received rather 
than imparted adornment to her person. She was married 
at an early age to James Hay, afterwards second Earl of 
Carlisle, whose father filled so eminent a part in the 
transactions of the reign of James I., and who ran so 

* See Appendix. Note G. 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 41 

eccentric a course in the career of pomp and prodigality. 
The countess, after the death of her lord in October, 1660, 
married, says Dugdale, Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, 
and second Earl of Holland; and lastly, Edward Montagu, 
the celebrated Lord Kimbolton of an earlier period, and 
equally illustrious during the civil wars as Earl of Man- 
chester. With this nobleman, who was universally beloved 
for his unbounded hospitality, obliging temper, and great 
virtues, which have won from Clarendon the highest 
eulogiums, she spent but a few happy years, as he died 
in 1664. She survived him nearly twelve years, being 
interred at Chenies in 1676, but left no offspring by 
either of her husbands. 

VIII. — DIANA, LADY NEWPORT. 

Diana, the earl's fourth daughter, was born in 1622. 
She blended in her countenance the predominating qualities 
of her two elder sisters ; but of the two it possessed more 
of Lady Carlisle's benignity than Lady Bristol's loftiness. 
Its prevalent expression was that of a candid and a tranquil 
spirit, owing more, in its power of pleasing, to the grace 
of regularity and calm composure, than to the active charm 
of animated thought. She was married to Francis, the 
eldest son of Sir Richard Newport, of High Ercall, in 
Shropshire, a gentleman who, for his devotion to the cause 
of Charles I., came to be rewarded with the title of Lord 
Newport, by letters patent granted in the year 1642. Lady 
Newport, by letters patent to her husband in 1675, was 
raised to the rank of a vicountess ; and by a similar mark 
of royal favour, in 1694, she became Countess of Brad- 
ford. She died 30th January, 1696-7, and was interred 
at Chenies. 

E 2 



42 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

WILLIAM, FIRST DUKE OF BEDFORD. 

This nobleman, as already stated, was the eldest son of 
Francis, fourth Earl of Bedford. He was born in 1613, 
and received his education at Magdalen College, Oxford. 
He then travelled for two years, and returned in the winter 
of 1634, an extremely handsome and accomplished gentle- 
man. There was at this time three young beauties of 
almost equal personal attractions, who divided the ad- 
miration of the court, the Lady Elizabeth Cecil, Lady 
Anne Carr, and Lady Dorothy Sidney. It was some time 
before his intentions as to these ladies was divined by that 
numerous tribe which flutters in the sunshine of court 
fashion ; but his secret partiality was at length betrayed. 
"The voice goes,'* says a writer of the day, "that he 
bends somewhat towards the Lady Ann Carr." She was 
the sole daughter of the Earl and Countess of Somerset, 
whose guilt, as the murderers of Sir Thomas Overbury, 
we presume must be generally known to our readers. 
Lady Anne was born 9th December, 1615, whilst her 
mother was imprisoned in the Tower. She had grown up 
in total igorance of the crimes of her parents; whilst every 
care that parental fondness could suggest had been 
lavished on her education. The Earl of Bedford had 
stood prominently forward on the day of her mother's 
condemnation, and could not but have participated in the 
general abhorrence that attended the disclosure of her 
guilt. Anxious now, both for his son's welfare and the 
honour of his house, he warned him to be upon his guard 
against the dangerous beauty of Lady Anne Carr, but 
freely permitted him to choose a wife from any other 
family in England. Affection is, however, no passive 
creature of the will ; and a passionate attachment sprung 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 43 

up between the two, before which every lighter considera- 
tion of policy and prudence was quickly extinguished. 
The earl opposed their union; the prohibition but increased 
their flame; and a war of conflicting wishes, regrets, and 
troubles thus arose, which threatened to disturb for ever 
the peace of either the father or the son. Many mutual 
friends endeavoured to mediate a satisfactory conclusion of 
the afikir, but none could conquer the earl's repugnance 
to the match, till the king himself became a suitor, 
sending the Duke of Lennox with urgent entreaties to 
persuade him no longer to withhold his countenance from 
the connexion. His intercession took efiect, and a treaty 
was commenced. The earl's high requisitions and the 
poverty of Somerset created fresh delay; but at length, by 
the sale of his house at Chiswick, his plate, his jewels, and 
his household furniture, a portion of £12,000 was raised 
by Somerset, who observed to the lord chamberlain, that 
"since her aff'ections were settled, and as one of them 
must be undone if the marriage went not on, he had 
rather ruin himself than his own deserving child." All 
obstacles being thus removed, the marriage was celebrated 
during the Easter of 1637, Lord Russell being then 
twenty-three years old, and the bride twenty-one.* The 
undisturbed happiness and harmony in which they lived, 
soon reconciled the earl to the connexion ; and, eminent 
in all the duties of civil and domestic life, the Lady Anne 
Carr is only now remembered as the virtuous and happy 
mother of the great and good Lord William Russell. 

Lord Russell succeeded his father as fifth earl, in 1641. 
He had sat in the House of Commons with Mr. Pym for 
Tavistock-, and in the upper house, to which he was now 

* See Appendix, Note H. 



44} SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

called, the example of his father induced him to range 
himself on the side of the people. As the public animosities 
increased, he endeavoured to keep the middle course of 
constitutional safety; but strict neutrality became at length 
impossible; and when the royal standard was raised at 
Nottingham, he did not hesitate to take his first stand in 
arms upon the side of the parliament. He raised the 
Devonshire militia, and accepted a commission as general 
of horse under the Earl of Essex. He was almost imme- 
diately despatched, with a powerful body of cavalry and 
seven thousand foot, to harrass the Marquis of Hertford in 
the western counties, where that nobleman was employed 
in levying forces for the king. He conducted the enter- 
prise with vigour and success, rejoined the main army, 
and had assigned to him the charge of the reserve of 
horse at the battle of Edgehill, where he is reported by 
Lord Wharton ** to have done extraordinary service." He 
saved, in fact, the parliamentary army from total defeat ; 
for on the route and flight of Essex's two wings, "he 
brought up very gallantly," amidst the play of cannon, 
his central troop of horse, which falling on the rear and 
flank of the king's foot, wrung from Prince Rupert the 
advantage he had gained. The earl now exerted himself 
strenuously for an accommodation between the contending 
parties ; but being thwarted by the more violent of his 
own party, he, with the Earls of Clare and Holland, 
resolved to throw themselves upon the king. He received 
them graciously, but their reception by his counsellors 
was cold and unpalatable. The earl, however, joined the 
royal army; and at the battle of Newbury " charged with 
bravery in the king's own regiment of horse, and well 
behaved himself throughout." The disdain and disrespect, 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 45 

however, with which he was treated by the queen and the 
courtiers so effectually disgusted him that he rejoined 
Essex at St. Alban's. The parliament had sequestrated 
the earPs estate, but after the battle of Marston Moor in 
1644, the sequestration was taken off. He took little part 
in public affairs after this, but retired into private life until 
the Restoration. During his retirement the king three 
several times became his guest at Woburn in 1644, 5, and 
7. On being delivered up by the Scots to the parliament, 
he remained nine days at Woburn, where the proposals of 
the army were submitted to him; and his rejection of 
which may be said to have decided his unhappy fate. 
During the commonwealth and protectorate, the Earl of 
Bedford found an agreeable relief from the distractions of 
the times in the bosom of his family, which consisted of 
seven sons and four daughters. The earl is stated to have 
liberally, though secretly, supplied Charles II. with pecu- 
niary aid during his exile, and he heartily concurred in 
every prudent measure to forward his recall. On the eve 
of the Restoration, he resumed his place among the peers, 
and took an active share in those conferences for the 
settlement of the kingdom, which preceded that event. 
At the coronation in 1661, he carried St. Edward's sceptre, 
and in 1672 was elected a knight of the garter. 

We shall dismiss very briefly the remainder of the earl's 
histoVy. The trial and execution of his eldest son Lord 
William are noticed below. We shall here simply state 
in reference to that unhappy catastrophe, that the name 
of the earl has never been mentioned as participating in 
the proceedings for which Lord William was arraigned. 
The greatest interest was made for a reprieve and pardon 
for Lord William. The Earl of Bedford is said to have 



46 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

offered £50,000, some say £100,000, to the Duchess of 
Portsmouth, the king's favourite mistress, for her inter- 
vention, if it proved successful ; and in a letter which he 
himself wrote to the king, he pathetically assures him that 
he would think himself happy to he left only with bread 
and water, so that the life of so endeared a son were spared 
to him. These applications would probably have been 
successful had not Charles been steeled against forgiveness 
by his inexorable brother, the Duke of York, afterwards 
James II. We must also record the bitter taunt which, 
by a just retribution, the aged earl flung at James, when 
in the last agonies of his expiring sovereignty. *'My 
lord," said that miserable prince, when for the last time 
he called about him the few eminent persons who had not 
yet joined his adversary, " you are a good man ; you 
have much interest with the peers ; you can do me ser- 
vice with them to-day." "For myself," said the earl, with 
a subdued reproach, in which, however, there was more 
of sorrow than of anger, "for myself, sir, I am old and 
weak, but I once had a son who could indeed have served 
your majesty !" 

The execution of the earl's eldest son, in IG83, was fol- 
lowed in May, 1684, by the death of his countess in her 
69th year. The health of this amiable lady had received 
a shock which she never recovered; from the, moment of 
Lord Russell's tragic death it visibly declined ; and in 
musings on his manly virtues, and her own irreparable 
loss, she pined silently away. Her death is said to have 
been accelerated by another incident of striking pathos — 
the accidental sight, in a window of the earl's study, of a 
pamphlet commenting on her mother's guilt, of which she 
is stated to have been till then mercifully kept in igno- 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 47 

rancc. The pang of this disclosure was too great for her 
enfeebled frame to bear ; and in the recoil of concentrated 
feeling, the chord of life gave way. She was found sense- 
less by her attendants, with the open page before her; and 
a passage in one of Lady Russell's letters (widow of Lord 
William) favours the supposition, that if her gentle spirit 
had been strengthened to survive the shock, it would have 
been only purchased by the loss of reason. She was 
interred in the family vault at Chenies. 

When the Prince and Princess of Orange mounted the 
throne, the Earl of Bedford was sworn of their privy 
council ; was made lord-lieutenant of the counties of Bed- 
ford, Cambridge, and Middlesex; and on the 11th of May, 
1694, was advanced to the dignities of Marquis of Tavis- 
tock and Duke of Bedford, " as the father of Lord Russell" 
says the patent, " and to celebrate the memory of so noble 
a son." Having seen his numerous offspring all settled in 
conditions suitable to their birth, beloved and honoured 
for their merits and his own, and the public principles, for 
which he had paid a price so inestimable, triumphantly 
established, he had little more to live for. It was his daily 
petition that, next to the pardon of his transgressions, the 
God in whom he had so faithfully trusted would grant him 
an easy passage to the tomb ; and the prayer was graci- 
ously accepted. " Never," said Dr. Freeman, in preaching 
his funeral sermon, " never did any person leave the world 
with greater inward peace, or a more resigned mind, with 
less struggle and discomposure, or with more assured hopes 
of a joyful resurrection. His lamp of life was not blown 
out ; the oil wasted by degrees, until the flame decayed. 
Nature was quite tired and spent, and he fell asleep," on 
the 7th of September, 1700, in his 87th year. He was 



48 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

interred at Chenies, where a handsome moument of white 
marble is erected to the memory of himself and countess, 
surrounded with medallions of their numerous issue. Their 
portraits by Vandyke, will be found engraved in Lodge, 
vol. 9. A handsomer pair were perhaps never joined. 

FAMILY OF WILLIAM, DUKE OF BEDFORD. 
I. — FRANCIS, LORD RUSSELL. 

Francis, Lord Russell, was born in 1638. After com- 
pleting his education at Cambridge, with his next brother, 
William, they were sent upon their travels through France, 
Switzerland, and part of Germany to Augsburg, where they 
made some considerable stay. Previously to their setting 
out, the earl addressed to them a letter of advice, of unex- 
ampled beauty. Lord Francis, from the prevalence of a 
melancholy temperament, which, as he grew up, settled 
into an utter disrelish of society, seems to have been little 
able to requite his father's cares. He parted from his 
brother at Augsburg, in the summer of 1657, and for ten 
years sought by change of scene from the German to the 
Italian cities, and from Italy to France, to divert the slug- 
gish current of his humour : ten more were spent without 
memorial in congenial privacy, and in 1578, he died 
unmarried at the age of 41 . 

II. — WILLIAM, LORD RUSSELL. 

The story of this unhappy nobleman is familiar to every 
reader of English history. He was born 29th Sept., 1639, 
and was educated, and went on his travels, as we have 
seen, with his elder brother Francis. Travel accomplished 
in him its proper end; his observation was quickened, his 
knowledge of men and manners deepened and enlarged, 
and his aim at excellence in every thing he undertook was 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 49 

kept in perpetual play, till it settled into that generous 
ambition of distinction which is the genuine parent of 
heroic actions. During this time he kept up an active 
correspondence with Mr. Thornton, who describes his 
letters as "fraught with choice descriptions, and observa- 
tions clothed in a style so free, masculine, coherent, and 
exact, as would not (flattery apart) have dishonoured the 
greatest masters of eloquence." At Lyons he had the 
fortune to meet the celebrated load-star of the north^ 
Christina of Sweden, who attracted to that city, while she 
stayed, a galaxy of rank and beauty that dazzled his 
imagination. In a few decisive strokes, he sketches to 
his friend the impression made upon him by the arctic 
heroine. " I wished you a sight truly of the Queen of 
Sweden, who surely deserves admiration, if any woman 
does; I do not mean for the beauty of her face, but for the 
majesty that appears in it, as likewise in all her actions 
and comportments, which savour far more of a man than 
of a woman, which sex she resembles in nothing more 
than in her inconstancy. For in truth I conceive her to 
be as weary of her new religion as of her old one, as is 
plainly seen by her postures, gestures, and actions at 
mass; before which, I think she w'ould at any time prefer 
a good comedy, and a handsome witty courtier to the 
devoutest father." In 1658, Lord Russell contemplated 
engaging in the Swedish wars, but the Restoration being 
meditated in the following year, he was hastily summoned 
home from Paris by his father. Upon the Restoration, 
he was returned to the new parliament as member for 
Tavistock ; and being in the heyday of his youth, he mixed 
with ardour in the gaieties of the reviving court, not with- 
out being entangled for a while in some of its prevailing 

F 



50 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

dissipations. A passionate attachment, however, to the 
lady who became his future wife, soon freed him from the 
pursuit of these ilhisory pleasures. Rachel, the youthful 
widow of Lord Vaughan, was the second daughter of 
Thomas Wriothesley, the virtuous Earl of Southampton. 
From her mother, Rachel de Rouvigny, a French Pro- 
testant, who was known in youth by the title of Za belle et 
vertueuse Huguenotte, she inherited considerable personal 
attractions ; and from her father a copious fund of sound 
and sterling sense, which, combined with a rare assemblage 
of those sweet and winning virtues which unaffected piety 
had engrafted on her native disposition, gave a tone of 
exaltation to her character that was early noted and appre- 
ciated by her friends. Lord Russell saw, conversed with, 
and became quickly enamoured with this amiable lady; 
and after a courtship of two years, they were married in 
May, 1669; immediately after which they set out on an 
excursion into Scotland, visiting Anne Clifford, Countess 
of Pembroke, at Pendragon Castle on their way. Then 
followed a happiness that seems to have reconciled w4th 
reality the ideal bliss that poets have so often feigned, in 
the union of the pure beings of their imagination, and 
which increased with the intimacy of succeeding years. In 
this happy and retired tenour ran the first four years of 
their wedded life. But at the evils that now overhung his 
country from an arbitrary ministry his spirit took alarm ; 
to the championship of its cause he brought indeed no 
shining talents, but a reputation for integrity and virtue 
that soon amounted to reverence, a soul inflexibly tenacious 
of its purpose, a love of constitutional freedom, and a 
glowing zeal for the Protestant religion. In this spirit 
he strenuously opposed in parliament the measures of the 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 51 

government, from 1673 until 1679, when the king resolved 
to combine in his councils several of the most distinguished 
leaders of the opposition with an equal number of the old 
adherents of the court. Lord Russell and others of the 
country party were sworn of the privy council, of which 
Shaftesbury was made the president. Here, how^ever, he 
breathed no congenial atmosphere. The king refused to 
be guided by the majority of his council ; and when Russell 
and others, on 28th January, 1680, demanded the king's 
permission to leave the council board, he answered with 
laconic emphasis, "Ay, gentlemen, with all my heart." 
The country party, to which Lord Russell belonged, had 
now obtained their honourable synonyme of Whigs, and 
they were earnest for the suppression of popery, and the 
exclusion of a Catholic successor. The exclusion bill itself 
was seconded in the House of Commons by Lord Russell, 
who was appointed to carry it up to the lords, which he 
did, accompanied by more than two hundred members of 
the house. Several wished it to be kept back for a time, 
"but Lord Russell, animated by exceeding zeal, and 
having the bill in his hand, ran away with it, in spite of 
all opposition. The members, seeing that, thronged after 
him, and when it was delivered, gave a mighty shout." 
The bill, however, was thrown out by the lords on the 
first reading. 

The alleged participation of Lord Russell in the Rye- 
house plot in 1683 is a subject too familiar to the readers 
of history to be here discussed. SuflSice it to say that the 
Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Essex, the Lords Russell 
and Grey, and others, were on this occasion accused of 
treasonable practices. Monmouth was admitted to bail 
and fled ; but Russell and Essex were brought before the 



52 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

privy council, where, says Burnet, " the king told Russell 
that nobody suspected him of any design against his 
person, but that he had good evidence of his being in 
designs against his government/' After a long examina- 
tion he was committed a close prisoner to the Tower. He 
was brought to trial on the 13th July, charged with 
conspiring with other traitors to bring the king to death, 
to raise war and rebellion against him, and to massacre 
his subjects. With a serenity that excited the highest 
admiration, Lord Russell appeared at the bar of the Old 
Bailey. The scene has been immortalized by the genius 
of Hayter, whose picture of the trial is at Woburn Abbey. 
Every hardship that could be inflicted by angry and vin- 
dictive enemies he was doomed that day to bear. Even 
before he opened his lips in his defence, he was treated 
by Sawyer, the attorney-general, like a guilty felon. His 
request for delay for the arrival of his witnesses was 
refused; his right to challenge such jurors as possessed 
no freehold was overruled. He at length requested pens 
and an amanuensis. To prevent his having the aid of 
counsel, Sawyer said he might employ a servant, " Any of 
your servants," said Pemberton, the chief justice, " shall 
assist in writing for you." "Two," said JefFeries; "he 
may have two." " My wife," said Lord Russell, the heart 
of the husband and the father rising to his tongue, " my 
wife is here, my lord, to do it." The bystanders turned, 
and saw the daughter of the most virtuous minister whom 
Charles had ever possessed or disregarded, take her station 
at the table; and pity, shame, and sorrow, and holy 
reverence, and thrilling indignation, touched by turns the 
soul of every one who had a heart to feel for his country 
or himself, for wounded virtue or for violated freedom. 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 53 

The proof against him was not so strong as had been 
expected, and the defence which Lord Russell made was 
in harmony with his character — unambitious, manly, and 
consistent with itself. He neither avowed nor denied the 
facts of the case ; and leaving his honour to the justice of 
Heaven and posterity, he contented himself with an 
indignant disavowal of the treason with which he was 
charged. He was found guilty of the various counts of 
the indictment; but the parliament which subsequently 
cancelled his attainder has declared that " by partial and 
unjust constructions of law, he was wrongfully attainted 
and convicted." His deportment throughout was firm and 
collected, and he listened to the verdict, and afterwards 
to the sentence of death, without the slightest apparent 
emotion. 

From the moment of his being cited for examination 
before the privy council. Lord Russell prepared himself 
for death. Upon entering the Tower he said to his 
gentleman usher, Andrew Taunton, that he was sworn 
against, and that they would have his life. When 
Taunton expressed a hope that this would not be in the 
power of his enemies, " Yes," said Lord Russell, " for the 
devil is broke loose." To his wife he stated his entire 
willingness to leave the world ; and on receiving a letter 
from her full of high-minded exhortations, he declared, in 
a transport of admiration at the heroism she evinced, 
"that he was at that moment above all earthly things; 
above lieutenant, or constable, or king, or duke." During 
the week that elapsed between his conviction and execu- 
tion, he devoted his hours to the scriptures, and his mind 
had settled into so happy a serenity as to manifest an 
absolute triumph over death. The narrative of his last 

F 2 



54 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

days, left by Dr. Burnet, is fraught with the most affecting 

tokens of his magnanimity and mildness, his fortitude and 

resignation, forgiveness of injuries, affection to his family, 

love of his country, and piety to God; and he declared 

that he had such a clear assurance of Divine acceptance, 

as to render his approaching exit, except as it affected 

others, scarcely worth a thought. We have already alluded 

to the exertions made to obtain a pardon ; but it was by 

Lady Russell that the most unwearied efforts were exerted, 

and she applied herself with untiring industry in making 

every intercession to friendship or power that she could 

make without derogating from her self-respect. The king, 

mistrusting his own firmness, forbade her admission to his 

presence, lest he should be moved by her distress. Formal 

petitions to the king and duke being the only means of 

access open to her. Lord Russell, though expressing his 

strong desire that she would " give over thus beating 

every bush,'* yielded to her importunity ; and the petitions 

w^ere sent, but without effect. The day before his death 

w^as spent by him principally in devotion. He received 

the sacrament from Tillotson, heard two short sermons 

from Burnet, and was engaged in intimate conversation 

with him till towards evening. Lord Cavendish, who had 

lived in the closest intimacy with him, offered to manage 

his escape by changing clothes wdth him ; and the Duke 

of Monmouth, by message, offered to surrender* himself if 

this would contribute to his safety; but he calmly replied, 

*' it will be no advantage to me to have my friends die 

with me." Being seized with a bleeding at the nose, he 

said to Dr. Burnet, " I shall not now let blood to divert 

this distemper; that wall be done to-morrow." In the 

evening he received the visits of a few- friends, and with 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 55 

firmness took his last leave of them, and of his innocent 
young children. His lady stayed, at his desire, to partake 
alone with him of his last earthly meal; and when she 
too arose to go — in an agony of spirit, but perfectly com- 
posed and calm, controlling her own emotion that he 
might retain the mastery of his — he tenderly kissed her, 
embraced her for the last time, and gazed after her as she 
departed with a feeling that condensed into that one 
moment the emotion, the trials, and the grief of years. He 
then turned to Dr. Burnet, by w^hom he was now rejoined, 
and exclaimed, " The bitterness of death is over !'' 

On the following morning (July 21) the metropolis sent 
forth its multitudes to gaze, to sorrow, or to glow over the 
contemplation of a memorable and a mournful sight. A 
little before the sheriffs conducted him to the scaffold, he 
wound up his watch, saying, " Now I have done with time, 
and henceforth must think solely of eternity.'* The scaf- 
fold was erected in Lincoln's Inn fields, whither he was 
conducted from the Tower. As he passed Southampton 
House, where he had spent so many happy hours, a tear 
involuntarily started to his eye, which he quickly wiped 
away. On the scaffold, instead of addressing the people, 
he delivered a paper to the sheriffs, in which he maintained 
his political sentiments with a magnanimous moderation. 
Without the least change of countenance he then laid his 
head upon the block, and at two strokes it was severed 
from his body. He w^as only in his 44th year. Lady 
Russell survived until the 29th September, 1723, when 
she died at her house in Bloomsbury, at the advanced age 
of 86. Some idea of her character may be gathered from 
the account we have already given. A splendid eulogium 
on her virtues will be found in the *' Moral Sketches" of 



56 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

Hannah More, who declares " that such a combination of 
tenderness the most exquisite, magnanimity the most un- 
affected, and Christian piety the most practical, have not 
often met in the same mind. Many daughters have done 
virtuously, but thou excellest them all !" We cannot 
resist quoting one remarkable proof at once of the tender- 
ness and firmness of her character. We shall have occasion 
to record the anxious solicitude with which she attended 
the death-bed of her son, the second duke. The second 
of her two daughters, the Duchess of Rutland, died shortly 
after in childbirth of her tenth child. Her eldest daughter, 
Rachel, Duchess of Devonshire, being at the same time 
confined on a similar occasion, and making anxious and 
importunate inquiries of her after the state of her sister's 
health, the incomparable parent replied, without a mo- 
ment's hesitation, " Your sister is very well ; I have this 
morning kissed her, out of bed, my dear !" — which she 
had done — in her coffin ! 

Lord Russell left an only son, Wriothesley, who suc- 
ceeded to his grandfather's honours and estates i and two 
daughters, Rachel, married to William Cavendish, second 
Duke of Devonshire; and Catherine, to John Manners, 
Marquis of Granby, son and heir of John, first Duke of 
Rutland. 

We shall briefly dismiss the rest of the duke's family. 
John, the third son, died young ; Edward and Robert, the 
fourth and fifth, both of whom married, died childless. 
James, the sixth son, married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of 
Sir Edmund Wright, Lord Mayor of London ; and secondly 
Elizabeth, daughter of Tryphaena Grove, who survived him, 
and married for her second husband Sir Henry Houghton, 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 57 

baronet, of Houghton Tower, Lancashire. George, the 
seventh son, also married; but from these last two sons 
no male issue now remains. The daughters were — Anne, 
who died young, in consequence of eating certain noxious 
berries, that were partaken of also by her second sister, 
Diana, who, however, happily recovered, and married, 
first. Sir Greville Verney, and secondly, William, Baron 
AUington. Catherine, the third daughter, died young; 
and Margaret, the youngest, married her cousin Edward, 
Earl of Orford. 

WRIOTHESLEY, SECOND DUKE OF BEDFORD. 

On the death of William, first Duke of Bedford, in 1700, 
he was succeeded by his grandson, Wriothesley, only son 
of William Lord Russell. Born 1st November, 1680, he 
had been too young at his father's death in 1683, to be 
sensible of his irreparable loss. His education was con- 
ducted under the eye of his mother, who listened in due 
time to a proposal for his marriage to Elizabeth, daughter 
of Mrs. Howland, of Streatham. Lord Russell was at that 
time scarce fifteen, and his destined bride was probably 
still younger ; but the match was promoted by the relations 
on both sides, and approved of by King William, who, in 
compliment to the large succession to which Miss How^land 
was entitled, created the young bridegroom Baron How- 
land of Streatham, immediately after the marriage^ which 
was celebrated 23d May, 1695, the ceremony being per- 
formed by Bishop Burnet. After the marriage he w^ent to 
finish his education at Oxford, and at the age of seventeen 
he went upon his travels. After visiting Germany, he, in 
1698, arrived at Rome, where he passed the winter in a 
round of festivities. Here having indulged in play and 



58 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

sustained serious losses, the embarrassment which ensued 
effectually cured him of his propensity to that pernicious 
passion. He returned to England in 1699, with all his 
virtuous sentiments confirmed, and his personal accom- 
plishments improved. His first study, on succeeding to 
the dukedom, was to repair the losses which his indiscre- 
tions had occasioned ; and this he soon accomplished by a 
system of wise economy. Few farther particulars of his 
life remain to be communicated. He was devoted to 
floriculture, landscape gardening, and agriculture ; and in 
these pursuits, and the perusal of the books which he was 
constantly adding to his library, his years passed on in 
tranquil retirement. He took some part, however, in 
public affairs, particularly in the high disputes that agitated 
the reign and parliaments of Queen Anne. In May, 1711* 
while in the full enjoyment of health and vigour, he was 
seized with the small-pox ; neither inoculation nor vacci- 
nation were then known; as soon as the disorder had 
declared itself, his wife and children were obliged to fly 
from him; it baflled all the attempts used to soften or 
subdue it; and in the arms of his weeping and devoted 
mother he sank quietly to rest in his thirty-first year. 
The duchess survived her husband thiiteen years, dying 
29th June, 1724, aged forty-two. They had two sons and 
three daughters, of whom the eldest. Lady Rachel, was 
married first to Scroop Egerton, Duke of Bridge water, and 
secondly to Sir Richard Lyttlet on ; and the Lady Elizabeth 
married William Capel, Earl of Essex. Wriothesley, the 
eldest son, succeeded to the title. The second son was 
John, afterwards fourth duke. 

WRIOTHESLEY, THIRD DUKE OF BEDFORD. 

Wriothesley, third Duke of Bedford, succeeded his father 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 69 

when little more than three years of age. He was married 
at the age of seventeen, 22nd April, 1725, to the Lady 
Anne Egerton, only daughter of Scroop, Duke of Bridge- 
water, by Elizabeth Churchill, daughter of John, Duke of 
Marlborough. His minority terminated in 1729; and 
while his brother, Lord John, went upon his travels, and 
devoted his energies to the culture of his mind, the duke 
consigned himself to inglorious indolence and ease. To 
dissipate the gay monopoly of life, he flew to the turf and 
the billiard table, and became w^holly absorbed by the 
excitements of play. He was fond of the fine arts, and at 
one period found pleasure in the pages of the poet and 
historian ; but his fatal love of hazard seems at last to 
have extinguished his enjoyment of all other pursuits. 
This reckless dissipation gave wings to his wealth, and 
enervated at once the health of his body and the vigour 
of his mind. Serious symptoms of decline having appeared, 
he was advised by his physicians to try the milder air of 
Lisbon, and he sailed for that port in September, 1732 ; 
but becoming worse on the passage, was compelled to 
lapd at Corunna, where he expired on the 23rd October, 
in his twenty-fourth year. His remains were brought to 
England and interred at Chenies. The duke left no off- 
spring. His youthful widow married for her second hus- 
band William, third Earl of Jersey, by whom she had two 
sons, and died in 1762. 

JOHN, FOURTH DUKE OF BEDFORD. 

By the decease of his brother Wriothesley, Lord John 
Russell succeeded to the estates of his ancestors, and 
became fourth Duke of Bedford, being then twenty two 
years of age. He had married, in October, 1731, Lady 
Diana Spencer, with whom Frederick Prince of Wales 



60 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

wished to ally himself, but was prevented by the manage- 
ment of Walpole. She was the youngest daughter of 
Charles, Earl of Sunderland, by Lady Anne Churchill, 
daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough. By this 
lady he had an infant son, which died on the day of its 
birth, a misfortune enhanced by the death of its mother, 
27th September, 1735. In April, 1737, he married, as his 
second wife, Gertrude, daughter of John, first Earl Gower* 
The result was the birth of a son, Francis, Marquis of 
Tavistock, 26th September, 1739 ; a daughter, Caroline, 
born in January, 1742-3; and another son who died in 
infancy. 

The duke's private life furnishes scanty materials for 
biography. The tendency of his political opinions was 
shown by the part he took against Sir Robert Walpole in 
1742 ; but it was not till 1744 that he engaged in the public 
business of the country. In the latter year the govern- 
ment of Lord Granville had become so unpopular, that 
he was compelled to resign. A new ministry known in 
history by the name of the Broad-bottom Administration, 
given to it in derision, succeeded, in which the Duke of 
Bedford was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and 
was sworn of the Privy Council. On the King's visit to 
his German dominions in 1745, the duke was nominated 
one of the Lords Justices during his absence. In the 
latter part of that year, and while George II. was still 
abroad, the Pretender, Charles Edward, made his rash 
attempt to recover the crown by landing in Scotland. The 
duke, who was Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Bedford, 
was the first of the English nobility who raised, at his own 
cost, a regiment of foot for the defence of the country, an 
example that was followed with alacrity, and greatly con- 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 61 

tributed to suppress the rebellion. Although attached, 
however, to the established government, he opposed, in 
the House of Lords, a proposition for extending the 
penalties of high treason to the posterity of persons con- 
victed of corresponding with the sons of the Pretender. 
In an able speech, he introduced a touching allusion to 
the melancholy history of his own family. " Your lord- 
ships," he said, " cannot be surprised that I am alarmed 
at the proposal of a law like this ; I, whose family has 
suffered so lately the deprivation of its rank and fortune 
by the tyranny of a court ; I, whose grandfather was cut 
off by an unjust prosecution, and whose father was con- 
demned, for many years, to see himself deprived of the 
rights of his birth, which were at length restored to him 
by more equitable judges. It is surely reasonable, my 
lords, that I should oppose the extension of penalties to 
the descendants of offenders, who have scarce myself 
escaped the blast of an attainder." 

With the exception of some temporary changes, the 
ministry of which the Duke of Bedford was a member, 
continued until the conclusion of the peace in 1748.* On 
the 19th of February, in that year, he exchanged his 
situation at the Admiralty for the office of secretary of 
state for the northern department. His discharge of this 
office gave rise to dissensions between himself and the 
Duke of Newcastle, who could "bear, like the Turk, no 
brother near the throne." The Duke of Bedford com- 
plained that his colleague engrossed to himself the whole 
management of the affairs of their office, and that his 
demeanour was haughty and cold — manners so repugnant 
to his own temper, which was open and frank in a re- 
♦ See Appendix, Note I. 



62 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

markable degree, that he looked upon them as personal 
affronts. The Duke of Newcastle, on the other hand, 
alleged that the official affairs which should have been 
transacted by the Duke of Bedford were neglected; that 
his fondness for trivial amusements and rural sports, the 
carelessness, and sometimes the obstinacy of his disposi- 
tion, rendered him negligent of his duties, and impracticable 
in business. The Duke of Bedford's dislike of his colleague 
increased daily, and he gave proof of it by attaching him- 
self to the Duke of Cumberland and the Princess Amelia, 
neither of whom were favourable to the Duke of Newcastle. 
The latter accordingly determined to get rid of so uncon- 
genial a companion as his brother duke. The death of 
the Prince of Wales in 1751, by dividing the opposition, 
enabled the Pelhams to effect this and other plans they 
had formed for strengthening their power. In June, 1751, 
Lord Sandwich was removed, the same fate befell other 
friends of the duke, and he perceived that his own dismissal 
was resolved on. On the following day he repaired to 
the king at Kensington, and resigned the seals into his 
majesty's own hands. In the interview which took place 
on this occasion, the duke spoke warmly above an hour, 
and is said to have expressed his resentment and indigna- 
tion at the conduct of the Pelhams in terms which went 
far beyond the bounds of ordinary etiquette. He inveighed 
bitterly against his late colleague in particular, whom he 
accused of haughtiness and treachery, and enlarged upon 
the good qualities of Lord Sandwich and others, who had 
been displaced by the Duke of Newcastle, with a view of 
securing to himself and his brother all the offices and 
power of state. The king received these expostulations 
with great mildness; acknowledged the sense he entertained 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 63 

of the attachment which the duke had always evinced for 
his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, and ended by- 
pressing on him the post of master of the horse, which 
his grace declined to accept. 

From this period the Duke of Bedford was to be reckoned 
as the leader of a division of the opposition, and took a 
strong part in the discussions respecting the education of 
the heir to the crown ; and he was concerned in the circu- 
lation of that anonymous " Memorial" drawn up by Horace 
Walpole, purporting to be " signed by several noblemen 
and gentlemen of fortune," in which the charge of Jacob- 
itism, and intended treason, was distinctly brought against 
the persons who were entrusted with the education of the 
future king. On a partial change of ministry, at the end 
of the year 1756, the Duke of Bedford was appointed lord- 
lieutenant of Ireland. This was, perhaps, of all his public 
employments, that for which his character and habits best 
fitted him. He possessed an uncommon share of firmness, 
which his enemies called obstinacy ; and as he was besides 
fond of splendour and display, and was of a frank, convi- 
vial disposition, his administration was at once useful and 
popular in a country proverbially famed for hospitality, 
and which had long suffered under a deficient and mis- 
chievous system of evil government. The Irish court, 
during the time he presided over it, presented an ap- 
pearance of gaiety and content to which it had long been 
unused. During the period of the duke's government in 
Ireland, Thurot, a French pirate, who had been favoured 
by the court of Versailles, and whose depredations had 
rendered him formidable to the British merchant shipping, 
ventured, in the course of one of his excursions, to land at 
Carrickfergus ; and the commandant of the place was 



64 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

compelled, after a short but gallant defence, to capitulate. 
The triumph of the French adventurer was, however, as 
fleeting as it had been accidental. The militia was called 
out, and he was compelled to re-embark, in order to escape 
their vengeance. He was encountered in his retreat, near 
the Isle of Man, by Captain Elliott, of the iEolus, and two 
other frigates ; and after a desperate conflict Thurot was 
killed, and his three ships taken. 

In 1761 Lord Halifax succeeded the Duke of Bedford 
in the government of Ireland, and his grace was appointed 
keeper of the privy seal. When, in 1762, the treaty of 
peace with France had been agreed to, the duke was com- 
missioned as minister plenipotentiary to the court of Ver- 
sailles, for the purpose of concluding and signing the 
preliminaries. The terms upon which this peace was 
concluded excited loud and bitter animadversions in Eng- 
land. Charges of corruption were liberally heaped against 
Lord Bute, who had planned, and the Duke of Bedford, 
who had been the instrument of concluding it. In April, 
1763, Lord Bute retired, and the Granville administration 
was formed, in which the Duke of Bedford held the post 
of president of the council. A period of two years sufliced 
to make this ministry, which had never been very popular, 
generally obnoxious. The silk trade had declined since 
the peace ; and this misfortune was ascribed to the mea- 
sures of the existing government, the members of which 
were pointed out as victims for the popular fury. On the 
15th May, 1765, on his return from Westminster to Bed- 
ford House, the duke was waylaid by an insurgent mob, 
and narrowly escaped destruction, being assailed, as his 
carriage passed through Bloomsbury, by a tempest of 
stones, one pf which, of massive size, would undoubtedly 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 65 

have proved fatal, had not the gentleman who accompanied 
him parried the blow. On the following day their number 
was augmented to 8000, and the guards were ordered out. 
On the evening of the 17th, they assaulted Bedford House, 
and began the work of destruction by pulling down the 
outer walls; whilst another party surrounded the garden, 
where there were but fifty men on guard. In the midst 
of this danger, the duke remained perfectly collected and 
serene, and was with difficulty restrained from issuing 
into the square to harangue the infuriated mob. They 
had nearly forced their way to the house when another 
party of guards arrived, and dispersed them without loss 
of life. 

The opposition of the ministers to the regency bill had 
estranged from them the king's favour; and at length, in 
an interview with his majesty, the duke respectfully but 
firmly pressed home upon the monarch the injurious ten- 
dency of those vacillations which had been apparent in 
his conduct.* The ministry, however, was dissolved, and 
was succeeded by the Rockingham administration, which 
shortly after was displaced by that of Lord Chatham; and 
although the duke was more than once on the point of 
coalescing with the latter, the negotiations were broken 
off. In June, 1767, the Duke of Grafton's solicitations 
induced the Bedford party to separate from their friends ; 
and on that occasion the duke resumed his presidency of 
the privy council, which he held imtil his death in 1771. 
Throughout the whole of 1770 he had been seriously 
indisposed ; but although his strength gradually declined, 
he was able, up to the 4th January, 1771, to attend to his 
usual routine of business, and on the evening of the 15th 

* See Appendix. Note J. 

G 2 



66 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

of that month, says Mr. WifFen, his biographer, " the 
frank, the generous, the impetuous, the long powerful, the 
much calumniated John, Duke of Bedford, had ceased to 
breathe, — leaving the memory of his services and virtues 
for his posterity to cherish ; and the vestiges of his errors 
for his opponents and his country to forgive." 

In March, 1767, the duke received a severe shock in the 
accident that happened to his only son, the Marquis of 
Tavistock. This young man, whose habits of life were 
retired and domestic, after leaving the University of Cam- 
bridge, devoted his energies to the levies of his native 
county, the militia bill having then just passed. He 
accompanied his father to Ireland in 1759, and took a 
part of some activity in the Irish House of Commons. 
He afterwards went upon his travels, and sought out, for 
the cultivation of his taste in the fine arts, the cities, 
monasteries, palaces, and churches, where the best works 
of the great masters in architecture, painting, and sculp- 
ture, were erected or deposited. These he examined with 
critical minuteness, and recorded his remarks in notes 
which evince the possession of an accurate eye, a refined 
taste, and a most solid judgment, very remarkable in one 
so young. At home he was the intimate friend and com- 
panion of our great artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds. On his 
return, in 1762, he sat in parliament for his native county, 
and moved and presented an address of congratulation to 
the queen on the birth of a prince. He afterwards wrote 
to his friend and cousin. Lord Ossory, a series of interest- 
ing letters, to direct him in his foreign travels. In 1764 
he visited Paris, where his virtues and his accomplishments 
won for him from the gay literary society of that capital 
an attachment repeatedly glanced at in the private corres- 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 67 

pondence of Hume, the historian, who was there as secre- 
tary to the embassy of Lord Hertford. He married, on 
his return in June, 1764, Lady Elizabeth Keppel, daughter 
of William Anne, second Earl of Albemarle, who, to a 
sweetness of disposition peculiarly her own, joined all 
those mild and unaiFected virtues which tend to perpetuate 
the charm first given by personal grace and innate dignity 
of character. With this amiable lady Lord Tavistock 
attained a happiness which, in his own language, he 
scarcely dared to avow, and to which time only imparted 
additional lustre and sereneness. He now devoted his 
chief attention to agricultural pursuits, and the sports of 
the field; having taken a farm into his own hands, 
adjoining his residence, Houghton House, near Ampthill. 
On the 9th March, 1767, while only in his twenty-eighth 
year, the marquis, whose passion for hunting had continued 
to increase, had a fall from his horse, by which his skull 
was fractured. Professional aid being called in, a difficult 
operation was successfully performed, and after four days 
hopes were entertained of his recovery. But the gleam, 
unhappily, was of short duration ; and on the 23rd of the 
same month, a life of very extraordinary promise was pre- 
maturely closed ; but not, says Lord Orford, " until much 
honour, generosity, and every amiable virtue, had shone 
through the veil of natural modesty, that no young man 
of quality since the Earl of Ossory, son of the Duke of 
Ormond, had inspired fonder hopes, attracted higher 
esteem, or died so universally lamented." The full extent 
of this terrible accident was considerately kept from Lady 
Tavistock till further concealment was impossible. Amid 
the anguish that followed she gave birth to a posthumous 
infant on the 29th August, when she gave herself up to 



68 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

inconsolable sorrow. A deep decline succeeded, under 
which she lingered for a year, when, as a last resource, a 
voyage to Lisbon was agreed to. Whilst preparations 
were making for this object, an affecting incident occurred. 
At a consultation of the faculty held at Bedford House, in 
August, one of the physicians, whilst he felt her pulse, 
requested her to open her hand. Her reluctance induced 
him to use a degree of gentle violence, when he perceived 
that she had closed it to conceal a miniature of her late 
husband. " Ah, madam,'' he exclaimed, " all our pre- 
scriptions must be useless whilst you so fatally cherish the 
wasting sorrow that destroys you!'' "I have kept it," 
she replied, " either in my bosom or my hand, ever since 
my dear lord's death ; and thus I must indeed continue to 
retain it, until I drop off after him into the welcome 
grave." The physician sighed as he resigned her hand; 
the frigate, commanded by her brother. Captain Keppel, 
departed to its destined climate, and on the 2nd of October 
she expired. Being thus cut off by her pining grief, in the 
bloom of youth and beauty, she left three orphans to the 
guardianship of the Duke of Bedford — Francis, John, and 
William. 

It is natural to suppose that the Duke of Bedford must 
have been deeply affected by these fearful events. The 
letters of his children evince that he was one of the fondest 
fathers, but he had great fortitude and firmness ; and being 
urged by his friends to divert his thoughts by public busi- 
ness, he soon recovered his equanimity — a result which was 
generally ascribed to want of sensibility. " Some," says 
Hume, ** even reproached the duke with being too easily 
comforted; but it proceeded from the ardency of his 
temper, which always takes itself to the present object 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 69 

without reserve." * The character of the Duke of Bedford, 
indeed, is a subject which has been represented in the 
most opposite lights. The important stations which he 
filled during almost the whole period of his public life, 
exposed him to the animadversions of the organs of those 
by whom he was opposed, and of these the most brilliant 
and severe was the unknown writer of the Letters of 
Junius, If we are to place implicit reliance upon the 
crushing diatribes of that most formidable of assailants, 
the duke was a monster who disgraced humanity, com- 
bining in himself every personal and political vice for 
which a name has yet been found. The attacks of Junius 
were commenced in the twenty-third letter of the collected 
series, and are reiterated in several of those which imme- 
diately succeed. To these we must refer such of our 
readers as desire further information on this much vexed 
question. Mr. Wiffen, on the other hand, in his admirable 
" Memoirs of the House of Russell" — to which we have 
been greatly indebted in our notices of the family — has 
been at great pains to collect " testimonials to character" 
from the duke's contemporaries, which are briefly summed 
up in the sentence we have quoted above. Our own im- 
pression is, after a careful perusal of the history of his 
life, that the duke, like the rest of us, possessed a mixed 
character, in which virtues and failings were perhaps 
equally commingled j and that Junius has been led by the 
demon of party zeal to suppress his good qualities and 
exaggerate his faults. 

FRANCIS, FIFTH DUKE OF BEDFORD. 

Francis, eldest son of the Marquis of Tavistock, succeeded 
his grandfather, as fifth Duke of Bedford in 1771, when but 

* See Appendix, Note K. 



70 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

six years old, having been born 23d July, 1765. After 
receiving the rudiments of his education at Loughborough 
House, near London, he spent a few years at Westminster 
School, whence he was removed too early for the full 
cultivation of his talents, and entered at Cambridge in 
1780, The greater part of the years 1784 and 1785, he 
spent in foreign travel, and returned from the continent 
in August, 1786, a few wTeks after he had attained his 
majority. Inheriting almost with his blood, the principles 
by which his ancestors were guided, he attached himself 
to the party of which Mr. Fox was one of the chief orna- 
ments. As his character matured, his political friends 
who admired his unostentatious virtues, saw, at the same 
time, in his clear judgment and fervent power of expres- 
sion, in his abhorrence of all that was little and ungenerous, 
in his love of country, and his pure but regulated attach- 
ment to constitutional liberty, sure preludes of usefulness 
and distinction in the arena of parliamentary debate. The 
desire which he felt, however, to assist his party, in their 
opposition to measures that threatened to undermine the 
fabric of the national freedom, was for a long time repressed 
by extreme diffidence; but the spell which thus enthralled 
his faculties in silence was broken, in a moment of enthu- 
siasm, by a glow of vivid indignation; and the ability 
with which he repelled some imputations that had been 
cast upon himself and his political friends, at once surprised 
him into a confidence of his own powers, and laid the basis 
of that reputation which as a public speaker he afterwards 
acquired. It was not, however, till the year 1794, that the 
Duke of Bedford took a prominent part in the discussions 
in parliament. The Duke of Portland's administration had 
been succeeded by that of Mr. Pitt; but the remnant of the 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 71 

Rockingham party, of which the Duke of Portland was the 
chief, disagreeing with the Whigs in the extent of their 
views, a gradual estrangement ensued, and the Duke of 
Portland finally accepted office under Mr. Pitt, carrying 
with him from the opposition Earl Fitzwilliam, Mr. Wind- 
ham, Earl Spencer, and many other persons of rank and 
character, for whom the Duke of Bedford had the highest 
personal esteem. He was himself pressed in the strongest 
manner by the Duke of Portland to take part in the new 
arrangement, and consented to attend a meeting at which 
the overtures were to be considered ; but understanding at 
the outset that Mr. Fox had not been invited, he instantly 
left the apartment, declaring, that in that case he was quite 
sure the Duke of Bedford had no business there. He 
became henceforth one of the principal advocates in the 
House of Lords for all those various measures which Mr. 
Fox and Mr. Grey brought forward in the Commons, for 
terminating the war with France, for tranquillising Ire- 
land, for removing the severe restrictions that were placed 
on the liberty of the subject, for extending timely justice 
and conciliation to the Catholic population, and for effecting 
that reform in the representation of the people, which he 
conceived to be absolutely necessary " to infuse new vigour 
into the constitution, to control the overgrown influence of 
the crown, to check the power of the aristocracy, and that 
enormous influence which the minister had derived from 
the creation of peers, when peers were sent into the House 
of Lords by dozens" — a reform, without which he was 
entirely convinced that the country could never be placed 
on a good footing ; and hence he solemnly pledged himself 
before parliament never to take a share in any administra- 
tion with which it did not form a leading object. 



72 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

In the session of parliament in J 795, the duke opened 
the debates in the House of Lords, with a motion that the 
form of government prevailing in France should not either 
preclude a negotiation or prevent a peace on honourable 
terms. The motion was discussed with great spirit and 
ability, but led to no results. He censured with unwonted 
asperity the recall of Earl Fitzwilliam from Ireland, and 
urged the necessity of his return thither with conciliatory 
instructions as the only means of averting the frightful evils 
which speedily succeeded. He strongly opposed the bills 
against treasonable practices and seditious meetings, as 
extensions of the criminal law already sufficiently re- 
morseless, and as inconsistent with the English constitu- 
tion ; and he equally resisted the continued suspension of 
the Habeas Corpus Act, though anxious that the existing 
laws for the repression of tumult and sedition should be 
duly enforced. It was in the heat of debate on these 
coercive acts, that the Earl of Lauderdale indulged in 
those reflections on the pension recently granted to Mr. 
Burke, which led to the production of his celebrated 
"Letter to a Noble Lord," to which we have before 
alluded, and in which he so fiercely attacked the memory 
of the first Earl of Bedford. In the subsequent sessions, 
the duke continued opposition to the system of Mr. Pitt, 
whose pernicious policy had, as he conceived, inflicted 
such disastrous evils on the country. He eveli moved an 
address to the crown for his dismissal from office, broadly 
declaring "that his object was to chase corruption from 
senates, and despotic principles from the councils of kings." 
After recapitulating, in a long and able speech, all the 
grounds of his dissatisfaction, he declared that if unsuc- 
cessful in his endeavours for his country's good, there was 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 73 

nothing left for him but to retire, and transfer his efforts 
to a more tranquil and restricted sphere. On the motion 
being negatived, he entered a protest on the journals and 
seceded for a season from the political world, to stimulate 
his countrymen in that beneficial career of agricultural 
improvement in which he had already embarked. The 
triumphs which he achieved in this wide field of enterprise, 
the extent of his farm establishments, and the unbounded 
hospitality of his annual exhibitions are matters of general 
notoriety. To this cause he devoted no mean portion of 
his immense income. The ardour with which he encouraged 
all experiments for improvement in soil, in tillage, in the 
breeding of cattle, in irrigation, and in agricultural im- 
plements, has connected his name indissolubly with the 
annals of that science, one of the surest sources of a nation's 
wealth. From his enterprise, in concert with others, arose 
the Board of Agriculture. His annual sheep-shearings at 
Woburn, which was then regarded as the seat of rural 
science, frequented as they were not only by nobility, 
gentry, farmers, and graziers from all parts of the three 
kingdoms, but from many countries of Europe and from 
America, gave a new feature to the aspect of pastoral 
economy, and a fresh and powerful impulse in its progress 
towards perfection. 

While pursuing, however, these pleasing duties, he re- 
turned occasionally to his place in parliament. In 1798 
he again moved for a change of ministers, and an alteration 
of the system of government in Ireland; and in 1800 he 
proposed a counter-address to the king on his message 
relative to the rejected overtures of peace from the consular 
government of France. The earnest and energetic speech 
which he delivered on this occasion was one of the last 



74 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

great efforts Jwhich he made in parliament. He had the 
gratification, however, to see a momentary accomplishment 
of his patriotic designs ; and after the retirement of Mr. 
Pitt in 1801, on the ratification of the preliminaries of 
peace with the French republic, by Mr. Addington's 
administration, he frequently expressed his joy. He did 
not live to witness the brief duration of the peace and the 
hasty renewal of hostilities. An inflammation of the 
bowels, brought on by the casual exasperation of a com- 
plaint with which he had been afflicted from his early 
youth, suddenly threatened the termination of his life.* 
To the excruciating operation prescribed by his physicians, 
he submitted with equanimity, and sustained it with the 
most unshaken fortitude, but every effort of art proved 
unsuccessful ; and after making the most considerate ar- 
rangements for the happiness and comfort of those who 
were to survive him, he died at the age of thirty-seven, on 
the 2d March, 1802. "Dignified without pride, magni- 
ficent without ostentation, and generous without profusion; 
of unsullied integrity, and a benevolence unwearied in its 
exercise, the tidings of his dissolution gave a shock to the 
w^hole nation.'' Thus writes Mr. Lodge, from whose 
memoir, chiefly, we have abridged this notice. The duke 
having died unmarried, his family honours and great 
estates descended to his brother. Lord John Russell, at 
that time member of parliament for Tavistock. On 
moving for a new writ for that borough, Mr. Fox took 
occasion to pronounce a beautiful and just eulogium on 
the character of the friend whom he had lost—" not," as 
he declared, " for the purpose of fondly strewing flowers 
upon his tomb, but that that great character might be 
* See Appendix, Note L. 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 75 

strongly impressed upon the minds of all who heard him ; 
that they might see it ; that they might feel it ; that they 
might discourse of it in their domestic circles; that they 
might speak of it to their children, and hold it up to the 
imitation of posterity." The character of the duke is thus 
ably summed up in Burke's Peerage: — "Rejecting the 
wild theories which, in his day, endangered the sacred 
cause of freedom, the Duke of Bedford stood forward the 
hereditary champion of the constitution, prepared with 
equal fearlessness to repel the assaults of anarchy or of 
despotism. In private life his grace's deportment was so 
mild, benevolent, and courteous, that his friends, amongst 
the most devoted of whom was Charles James Fox, adhered 
to him with more than ordinary feelings of attachment — 
their affection amounted to enthusiasm." 

JOHN, SIXTH DUKE OF BEDFORD. 

John, sixth duke, was born 6th July, 1766 ; and on 21st 
March, 1786, married Georgina Elizabeth Byng, second 
daughter of George, fourth Viscount Torrington, minister 
plenipotentiary to the court of Brussels. He entered par- 
liament in 1788, as member for Tavistock, which borough 
he represented until the decease of the late duke. In 1802, 
he took his seat in the House of Lords; and in March, 
1806, was sworn at Dublin Castle Lord-Lieutenant of Ire- 
land. In the following year, on the breaking up of Lord 
Grenville's administration, he was recalled from that station 
by the succeeding government. By the above lady, who 
died 11th October, 1801, he had three sons. — 1. Francis, 
present duke.— -2. George William, born 8th May, 1790, a 
major-general in the army, G.C.B., and aide-de-camp 
unattached to the queen. He began his military career 
at the siege of Copenhagen in 1807, as aide-de-camp to 



76 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

Earl Ludlow, and served during nearly the whole of the 
Peninsular War on the staffs of Field-Marshal the Duke 
of Wellington and General Lord Lynedoch. He sat from 
1812 to 1830, in four successive parliaments, for the town 
and borough of Bedford, and was for some time envoy- 
extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary at the court of 
Berlin. He married 21st June, 1817, Elizabeth Anne, only 
child of the late Hon. John Theophilus Rawdon, and has 
three sons, the oldest of whom is in the Scots Fusilier 
Guards. — 3. John, the present prime minister of the British 
empire. The duke married, secondly, 23d June, 1803, 
Lady Georgiana Gordon, fifth daughter of Alexander, fourth 
Duke of Gordon, by whom he has had a family of nine 
sons and three daughters. Two of the sons died in 
infancy ; the rest of the family survive. His grace died 
20th October, 1839. 

FRANCIS, SEVENTH AND PRESENT DUKE. 

The present duke was born 13th May, 1788, and is now 
in his sixtieth year. In 1812 he was chosen a knight of 
the shire for the county of Bedford, which he represented 
also in the four succeeding parliaments. On 1 1 th December, 
1832, he was called to the House of Peers, by the title of 
Baron Howland of Streatham. He married 8th August, 
1808, Lady Anna Maria Stanhope, eldest daughter of 
Charles, third Earl of Harrington. He has one son^ 
William, Marquis of Tavistock, born 30th June, 1809. 

The arms of the House of Bedford contain a lion rampant, 
with a lion and an antelope for supporters, and a goat for 
a crest. The motto is Che sara, sara — " What will be, will 
be,'* And the family seats are Woburn Abbey,* Bedford- 
shire, and Endsleigh, Devon. 

* See Appendix, Note M. 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 77 

LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 

Lord John Russell was born in London on the 1 8th of 
August, 1792, and is now, consequently, in his fifty-sixth 
year. He was educated at Westminster, but completed his 
education at the University of Edinburgh. He was scarcely 
twenty-one when brought into parliament for his father's 
borough of Tavistock, in July, 1813. In November of 
that year he first spoke in the House of Commons, in 
condemnation of the cession of Norway to Sweden. In 
1815 he took a decided part in condemning the renewal 
of war with France, on Napoleon's return from Elba. In 
this year, also, he made his first appearance as an author, 
by the publication of his life of his illustrious ancestor, 
William, Lord Russell. 

In 1816 and 1817 he took part in the debates, but found 
his health so much impaired that he retired from parliament. 

He was again returned for Tavistock in January, 1819, 
and at the close of that year he proposed his scheme of par- 
liamentary reform. The resolutions with which he closed 
his speech, were confined to the disfranchising of boroughs, 
in which corruption should be found to exist, and to the 
extension of the franchise to the great unrepresented 
towns. These resolutions he withdrew, on Lord Castle- 
reagh's expressing his readiness to disfranchise the borough 
of Grampound, of w^hich the entire and profligate corrup- 
tion had very recently been proved before an Election 
Committee of the House of Commons. 

In 1820 Lord John was returned for the county of Hun- 
tingdon. In 1821 he introduced his bill for transferring 
the franchise of Grampound to Leeds, but the amendments 
introduced so altered it, that Lord John abandoned the 
bill, which was then taken up, and carried through the 



78 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

House of Commons by the present Lord Wharncliffe, then 
Mr. Stuart Wortley. In the House of Lords, the addition 
of two membei's to the county of York, was substituted 
for the enfranchisement of Leeds ; and in this shape the 
bill passed. — In this year his lordship published his ** His- 
tory of the Eritish Constitution ;" and, in the subsequent 
year, he gave to the world a tragedy, on the subject of the 
unfortunate Don Carlos, which evinced generoiis political 
sentiments, rather than poetical imagination. 

In 1822 he brought forward the question of reform in a 
simple resolution, that the state of the representation re- 
quired the serious consideration of the house. The speech 
in which he introduced this, was of a higher order than 
any by which he had as yet supported his views, and con- 
tained a valuable exposition of that increased national in- 
telligence and wealth, on which he grounded his argu- 
ments, for the expediency of an extension of popular 
rights. This motion was negatived by 219 to 164. In the 
next year he proposed the same motion, which was de- 
feated by 280 to 169. In 1824 he did not moot the question 
of reform : and confined his parliamentary exertions to a 
motion on the subject of the occupation of Spain by the 
French army. In this year he published the most valuable 
and interesting, as well as the last of his literary productions, 
being the first quarto volume of " A History of Europe, 
since the Peace of Utrecht." In 1825 he took no active 
part in the House of Commons : though in this, as in for- 
mer years, he is found generally supporting the various 
useful motions, by which the opposition of that day, with 
little immediate success, gave a finally triumphant impulse 
to liberal views of government. 

In 1826 Lord John renewed his motion for parliamentary 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 79 

reform, which was negatived by 247 to 123. At the close 
of that session he obtained a slight advantage by carrying, 
by the casting vote of the speaker, resolutions extending 
the time for petitioning in cases of general bribery alleged 
against a borough. He took part also in the debates on 
the corn laws, and expressed himseif favourable to a consi- 
deration of the expediency of amending them. At the 
general election of 1826 he was defeated in the county of 
Huntingdon, and compelled to enter parliament for the 
borough of Bandon-bridge in Ireland. 

In the year 1827 Lord John Russell gave his support to 
the liberal ministry of Mr. Canning. He declined renewing 
his motion for parliamentary reform, partly because he did 
not wish to bring that ministry into collision with his new 
supporters, and partly, as he stated, because he found a 
growing apathy on the question pervading not only the 
Whig party, but the whole public. He also postponed, at 
the request of the Committee of the Dissenters, a motion, 
of which he had previously given notice, for the repeal of 
the Test and Corporation Acts. The triumph, however, of 
this great measure w^as only reserved for the coming 
session, when his lordship, on the 28th of February, 
defeated the Wellington ministry by a vote of 237 to 193, 
on the question of leave to bring in a bill for the repeal of 
those acts. The ministry, after this defeat, abandoned all 
opposition to the measure, and with some alterations the 
bill passed both houses, and removed the political disqua- 
lifications of the Protestant Dissenters of the empire. 

A strong and unqualified attachment to religious liberty 
had always been a distinguished feature of Lord John 
Russell's character; and at this period the great cause, 
which he had at heart, advanced in a career of continued 



80 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

triumphs. In the year which followed the Restoration of 
the rights of Protestant Dissenters, the emancipation of 
the Catholics was extorted from the very ministry, which 
had been borne into power on the principle of oppo- 
sition to their just claims. In the next year his lordship 
supported a bill for the emancipation of the Jews, to 
which the result of one division in the House of Commons 
appeared to promise success. A second division, however, 
proved fatal to it; and this portion of an ancient code 
of causeless intolerance still disgraces our constitution 
although probably on the eve of being for ever swept away. 
The debates on the East Retford bill at the same time 
brought into prominent importance the yet greater ques- 
tion of parliamentary reform, which had previously been 
the chief subject of Lord John's labours. In 1829 and 
1830 the topic was brought before the public in various 
forms. In the latter year Lord John opposed Mr. O'Con- 
nell's motion for triennial parliaments, vote by ballot, and 
universal suffrage. A much less extensive motion of his 
own mustered only 117 against 213 votes. But the debates 
of these two sessions had produced an effect on the public 
mind, which the French revolution of the three days con- 
verted into a steady and general demand for parliamentary 
reform. And in November, 1830, Lord John Russell, for 
the first time, accepted office, and became a member of a 
ministry pledged to carry into effect the great principle of 
parliamentary reform. The state of his health is supposed 
to have been the cause of his not being taken into the 
cabinet, and of his being contented with the easy and 
honourable, but unimportant office of paymaster of the 
forces. In this office, however, it was that, in consi- 
deration of. the lead which he had always taken on the 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 81 

question, he was entrusted by Lord Grey with the honour- 
able duty of introducing the reform bill, the conduct of 
which he continued to take in its subsequent eventful his- 
tory. Through this contest we shall not follow Lord John. 
At the general election of 1831 he was returned without 
opposition for the great county of Devon ; and in 1832 he 
was admitted into the cabinet, without, however, quitting 
his office of paymaster of the forces, which he continued 
to hold throughout the administration of Lord Grey. 

The debates on the Irish coercion bill, and the declara- 
tions elicited from many members of parliament respecting 
the causes of disturbance in Ireland, had directed public 
attention to the great abuse of the Irish church establish- 
ment : and Mr. Ward's notice of a motion upon the subject 
had rendered it obvious that the session of 1834 could not 
pass without some declaration of the views of the govern- 
ment on this great question. Warm discussions are sup- 
posed to have arisen on the subject in Lord Grey's cabinet; 
and Lord John Russell is said to have taken the most 
active and determined part in insisting that the govern- 
ment should at once and thoroughly take the course of 
justice and true policy, by reducing the disproportioned 
Protestant establishment of Ireland. It is well known 
that the result was the declaration of sound views on the 
part of the government, even while it opposed Mr. Ward's 
motion ; and the public generally looked with gratitude to 
Lord John Russell as the main agent in this improvement 
of the spirit of the ministry, as well as the withdrawal of 
that illiberal portion of it, which soon afterwards joined 
the Tories, under Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham. 

On the death of Lord Spencer, and the consequent re- 
moval of Lord Althorp to the House of Lords, the talent 



82 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

and influence of Lord John Russell pointed him out as his 
successor in the lead of the House of Commons : and it is 
supposed that this formed part of the arrangements, which 
Lord Melbourne had to communicate to the king, when he 
was met by the abrupt announcement, of the king's deter- 
mination to change his ministry. Lord John Russell, in 
consequence, resigned with the rest of his colleagues, and 
instead of acting as the ministerial leader in the Commons, 
he found imposed on him the yet more arduous task of 
conducting the angry, extensive, and somewhat divided 
opposition, which was speedily arrayed against the ministry 
of Sir Robert Peel. On this great enterprise his lordship 
entered in the month of January, 1835, immediately after 
the termination of the general election, by a letter re- 
questing the attendance of all those, on whose support he 
relied in opposition, on the day of the meeting of parlia- 
ment, in order to vote for Mr. Abercrombie as speaker. 
After the success of this arduous struggle, the opposition 
carried an amendment to the address, in answer to the 
king's speech, and inflicted repeated defeats on the ministry 
in the course of various discussions and divisions in the 
ensuing month. 

The success of the opposition may be in a great measure 
ascribed to the admirable skill of its leader. Backed by 
a decided popular feeling, but commanding a slender ma- 
jority in the House of Commons, and opposed by the King, 
the House of Lords, and the great influence of the church 
and aristocracy, it was necessary for Lord John to exhibit 
the utmost prudence in choosing the course, and conduct- 
ing the details of his opposition. The general sense en- 
tertained of the skill with which he achieved it, was marked 
by the great dinner given to him at the Freemasons 



OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. 83 

tavern, in the early part of the year 1839, at which a ma- 
jority of the members of the House of Commons attended 
to do him honour. 

It was on the 30th of March, 1835, that he introduced 
his famous resolutions respecting the propriety of applying 
the surplus revenues of the Irish church to the education 
of the people. This motion being carried by a majority of 
thirty-three — 322 to 289, it was followed up by two suc- 
cessive motions, which pledged the House of Commons to 
agree to no settlement of the Irish tithes, except on the 
principle of appropriating the surplus revenue in the 
manner above specified, and which formally communi- 
cated this resolution to his Majesty. These being carried 
by majorities of twenty-five and twenty-seven, Sir Robert 
Peel resigned; and on Lord Melbourne's again being 
entrusted with the formation of a ministry, Lord John 
became secretary of state for the Home Department, and 
leader of the House of Commons. The former office he 
discharged with great credit to his assiduity and judgment 
for about four years, when he exchanged it for the Colonial 
Department. 

Lord John's acceptance of office, having vacated his seat 
for Devonshire, the Tory party strained every nerve to 
prevent his re-election ,• and such was their strength that, 
after a struggle of great warmth, their candidate, a country 
gentleman, of the name of Parker, was returned by a ma- 
jority of 627. Lord John was immediately returned to 
parliament for the large and opulent town of Stroud. 

An event of a yet happier nature marked this important 
period of Lord John RusseH's life. On the 11th of April, 
1835, his marriage to Adelaide, widow of Lord Ribblesdale, 
appeared to promise him domestic happiness, in addition 



84 ^ SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 

to the political eminence and fame which he had attained. 
But he was destined to enjoy but for a brief period the 
continuance of this happy tie. The lamented death of 
this lady in November, 1838, extinguished his hopes of 
domestic happiness, and in the hour of his greatest poli- 
tical anxieties overwhelmed him with the severest of 
afflictions. In 1841 he formed another matrimonial con- 
nexion with Lady Frances Anna Maria Elliot, second 
daughter of the Earl of Minto. By his first lady he has 
two daughters, and by his second, a son born in Dec, 1842. 
At the dissolution of parliament in 1841, Lord John was 
returned for the city of London, which he has since con- 
tinued to represent. As the character of our notices is 
rather historical than critical, we shall not enter into any 
farther disquisition on the history and character of our 
noble premier. To the great majority of our readers, 
indeed, these must be as well known as to ourselves. We 
cannot, however, close our history of the House of Russell 
without remarking on the gratifying fact, that no deterio- 
ration is to be found in the progress of this noble family 
from the time of its founder, the first earl, to the present 
day. On the contrary, if we may use an Iricism, they rise 
as they descend. Instead of degenerating into the mere 

•' Tenth transmitters of a foolish face/* 

the Russells have become, by a progress ever brightening, 
more and more illustrious as statesmen, philosophers, and 
patriots; and it is worthy of remark, that the youngest 
scion of this noble race has attained an eminence both of 
station and renown, which surpasses, though it cannot 
shade, the greatness achieved by the most distinguished 
of his ancestors. 



APPENDIX. 



Note A^ page 9.—" The Spittle." 

James himself ( Works, p. 301) thus alludes to this portion of the 
ceremony: "As for the queen my mother, of worthy memorie, 
although she continued in that religion wherein she was nourished, 
yet was she so far from being superstitious or jesuited therein, that 
at my baptisme (although I was baptised by a Popish archbishop) 
she sent him worde to forbeare to use the spettle in my baptisme : 
which was obeyed, being indeed a filthy and apish tricke, rather in 
scorn than imitation of Christ. And her own very words were, 
' That she would not have a pockie priest to spit in her child's 
mouth.' " 

Note B, p. 13. — Maids of Honour. 

The office of a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth was not at all 
times an enviable employment. Some curious tokens of her capri- 
cious peevishness are furnished in the gossip of that day. " The 
queen," says Sir Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, " hath of 
late used the fair Miss Brydges (daughter of the Lord Chandos) 
with words and blows of anger ;" and she, with Miss Russell, were 
put out of the coffer- chamber, lying three nights at Lady Stafford's 
before they could return to their wonted waiting, for the unpalatable 
offence of taking medicine, and going through the private galleries 
to see the lords and gentlemen play at the ballon. 

Note C, p. 24. — The "Countess Pillar." 

On the Roman road, called the Maiden way, between Penrith 
and Appleby, are to be found the remains of a stately obelisk, 
known by the name of the " Countess's Pillar," and bearing this 
inscription : — '* This pillar was erected in the year 1656 by Anne 
Countess Dowager of Pembroke, &c., for a memorial of her last 
parting in this place, with her good and pious mother, Margaret, 
Countess Dowager of Cumberland, on the 2d of April, 1616; in 
mem@ry whereof she hath left an annuity of £4 to be distributed to 
the poor of the parish of Brougham, every 2d day of April for ever, 
upon the stone table placed hard by. Laus DeoP'' Rogers, in his 
Pleasures of Memory^ thus beautifully commemorates " the silent 
sorrows of that parting hour :" — 

Hast thou through Eden's wild-wood vales pursued* 

Each mountain-scene, majestically rude; 

To note the sweet simplicity of life. 

Far from the din of Folly's idle strife ; 

Nor there awhile, with lifted eye, revered 

That modest stone which pious Pembroke rear'd ; 

Which still records, beyond the pencil's power, 

The silent sorrows of a parting hour ; 

Still to the musing pilgrim poiuts the place 

Her sainted spirit most delights to trace ? 

* The Eden is the principal river of Cumberland, and rises in the 
wildest part of Westmoreland. 



11. APPENDIX. 

Note Z>, p, 31.— Moor Park, Herts. 

Mr. Burke, in his Historic Lands^ after giving the prior history 
of Moor Park, adds— '^ The manor with the park was afterwards 
assigned by Queen Elizabeth to Francis Russell, second Earl of 
Bedford, and here the Russell family resided for some time. The 
first house upon this beautiful demesne of which we have any his- 
torical account, was inhabited by Lucy, Countess Dowager of 
Bedford, widow of Edward, third earl, and sister and co-heir of 
John, second Lord Harrington, a lady equally celebrated for her 
learning and extravagance, and a distinguished patroness of the 
most celebrated men of her time. Her ladyship laid out the gardens 
that attracted the admiration of Sir William Temple, and was the 
first to render this famous spot a point of general attraction. She 
did not, however, very long retain possession of an estate she had 
so greatly adorned, for in 1626, it passed by sale to William, Earl 
of Pembroke, by whom the house and park were severed from the 
manor, and sold to Robert Gary, Earl of Monmouth." It is worthy 
of remark that Sir William Temple himself occupied, during the 
last years of his life, another seat called " Moor Park," near 
Farnham, in Surrey. 

Note E, p. 38. — First Lord Brooke. 

Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke, was one of the chief ornaments 
of Ehzabeth's court, and stood among the foremost of those who 
were graced by her smiles. His character united to most of the 
talents of a statesman the easy gaiety and refined eloquence of a 
courtier. He was a good scholar, loved polite literature, delighted 
in composition, in which he employed his pen to a vast extent, and 
was a liberal patron to men of genius and learning. He was born 
in 1554, being the only son of Sir Fulke Greville, and Anne, daughter 
of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland. He was educated in a 
school, then of considerable fame, in the town of Shrewsbury, 
where he was placed with his relation, the incomparable Sir Philip 
Sidney, the darling companion of his youth, and the idol of his 
more mature friendship. After completing his education at Oxford, 
he went upon his travels, and on his return was introduced at court. 
We cannot minutely follow his career. The ancient castle of 
Warwick was bestowed upon him by James I., undel* whom he 
filled various oflSces of state. In 1620. he was created a baron, by 
the title of Lord Brooke, with remainder to his cousin Robert 
Greville, whom he had adopted, as mentioned in the text. He had 
reached his 74th year, when he was murdered, in his residence of 
Brooke-house, in Holborn, by a gentleman domestic, whom he had 
retained for many years in his service. The assassin, Ralph Hey- 
wood, who was alone with him in his bed-chamber, stabbed him in 
the back ; rushed instantly into another apartment and destroyed 
himself. This horrid act has been variously accounted for, but was 
probably the result of sudden frenzy. The noble sufferer survived 
a few days, and, dying 30th September, 1628, was buried in the 
great church of Warwick, under a monument which he had some 



APPENDIX. 111. 

years before erected, with ♦the well-known inscription, "Fulke 
Greville, Servant to Queen Elizabeth ; Councellor to King James ; 
and Friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophodum peccatV He was 
never married. 

Kote F, p. 38. — Second Lord Brooke. 

Robert Greville, second Lord Brooke, was one of those whom 
the troubles of the country induced to contemplate emigration to 
America. He, with Lord Say and others, purchased therefore from 
Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, an extensive tract of land in New 
England, which had been granted to him by the crown, and in 
1635 despatched thither an agent, of the name of Fenwick, with 
powers and instructions to found a settlement, which succeeded so 
well that a town was presently built, and called, after their joint 
names, Saybrooke. The course of events, however, induced them 
to abandon their intention. Lord Brooke ultimately became the 
leader of the popular party in the House of Lords, possessing as he 
did their entire confidence. When the king at length resorted to 
arms, he was one of the first to oppose the royal cause in the field. 
He put his castle of Warwick in a state of defence, and in a hot 
skirmish compelled the Earl of Northampton to raise the siege of 
that fortress. He was engaged, under the Earl of Essex, in the 
battle of Edgehill, where his regiment eminently distinguished 
itself. After the battle, Essex and his principal ofiicers retired 
with Brooke to Warwick Castle for a short repose; and thither 
were conducted also the principal royalist prisoners, together with 
their gallant and lamented general, Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, 
who died of his wounds within the walls, before he could be con- 
veyed to an apartment. In January, 1643, Lord Brooke was 
appointed by the parliament general of the forces in the counties of 
Warwick and Stafford ; and having subdued all opposition, marched 
with twelve thousand men against Lichfield. " Some gentlemen of 
that county," says Clarendon, " seized on the Close in Lichfield for 
the king ; a place naturally strong, and defended with a moat and a 
very high and thick wall, which in the infancy of the war was 
thought a good fortification. To suppress this growing force, the 
Lord Brooke advanced, and without any resistance entered the city 
of Lichfield, which being unfortified was open to all comers. He 
was so far from apprehending any danger from the besieged, that 
himself lodged in a house within musquet shot of the Close, where, 
the very day he meant to assault it, sitting in his chamber, and the 
window open, he was from the wall of the Close, by a common 
soldier, shot with a musquet in the eye, of which he instantly died, 
without sfveaking a word." Milton, in an address to the parliament, 
bestows upon him the highest eulogiuEi. Referring to a passage in 
Lord Brooke's " i3iscourse on Episcopacy," Milton characterises it 
as " so full of meekness, and breathing charity, that, next to the 
last testament of him who bequeathed love and peace to his disciples, 
I cannot call to mind where I have met with words more mild and 
peaceful." Lord Brooke had five sons by his lady, Catherine 
Russell. The first four having died without male issue, the title 



IV. APPENDIX. 

descended to Fulke, the fifth son, a posthumous child, ancestor to 
the present Earl of Warwick. 

N'ote G, p. 40.— George Digby, Earl cf Bristol. 

An ample biography of this extraordinary person will be found 
in Lodge''s Memoirs^ vol. 8. It is too long, even for an abstract, 
in this place. To those, however, who have access to that work, 
it will well repay perusal. The life, indeed, of this modern Proteus 
might form the subject of a romance, as full of incredible adven- 
tures and strange eccentricities as any that ever was penned. One 
or two particulars we cannot resist quoting. Being impeached by 
the Commons of high treason he fled into Holland. His restless 
activity, however, induced him to return to England, and landing 
on the northern coast he contrived to reach York undiscovered, 
where he had an interview with Charles, the result of which was 
that he should return to Holland with coufidential communications 
for the queen. He re-embarked in the vessel which had brought 
him, and which was presently after seized by a vessel belonging to 
the parliament, and brought into Hull. Disguised as a French- 
man, and speaking that language like a native, he lay in the hold 
pretending extreme sickness, and there found means to destroy 
his papers. On being landed he was confined alone, in considera- 
tion of his apparent weakness \ and now, reflecting on the certainty 
of being eventually discovered, and on the dire vengeance which 
would inevitably follow, one of those sudden and romantic experi- 
ments so dehghtful to his nature occurred to him, and he practised 
it without delay. Sir John Hotham was at this time governor of 
Hull, into which town, but a few weeks before he had refused to 
admit the king. Hotham was a man of stern character, but Digby 
resolved to throw himself on his generosity. He told his guard, 
in broken English, that he had secrets of importance to communi- 
cate, and thus obtained an interview with the governor. The room 
was full of company, and Digby entertained them for some time 
with fabricated French news in the most natural manner imagi- 
nable, till Hotham chose to withdraw him to some distance, when, 
to use the words of Lord Clarendon, ** Digby asked in English 
whether he knew him. The other, surprised, told him no : ' then,' 
said he, ' I shall try whether I know Sir John Hotham ; and 
whether he be in truth the same man of honour I have always 
taken him to be ;' and thereupon told him who he was ; and that 
he hoped he was too much of a gentleman to deliver him up a 
sacrifice to their rage and fury who he well knew were his implaca- 
ble enemies." The governor's feelings were not proof against 
such an appeal, and he concerted with Digby the means for his 
safety. In a subsequent engagement with the van of Essex's 
army, on Aldbourne Chase, near Hungerford, he was desperately 
hurt by the discharge of a pistol in his face, though miraculously 
missed by the ball. Being afterwards obliged to fly into France, 
he joined the French cavalry as a volunteer in the war of the 
Frondeurs. On that very day he accepted from an unknown officer 
of the enemy, one of those chivalrous challenges to single combat 



APPENDIX. y. 

SO common in the warfare of that time, and was treacherously 
fired on by the troop to which his antagonist belonged, and was 
severely wounded. It occurred not only in the sight of both armies, 
but of the king and his court, and the praise and indignation of all 
were instantly excited in his favour. On the death of his father 
he succeeded to the earldom of Bristol, with a splendid income. 
New singularities, however, now took possession of him. He 
seemed to have become a miser \ lived with scandalous meanness ; 
and was even rapacious in his eagerness to possess himself of money. 
He had secretly given way at once to amorous dissipation, and to 
the practice of gaming, and indulged in both with the most un- 
bounded extravagance. These excesses worked their own cure, 
and he soon reverted to ambition, and attempted unsuccessfully to 
supplant Cardinal Mazarin in the favour of the Queen Regent of 
France ; speaking to her on the subject with so little reserve that 
she punished his arrogance by instant dismissal. After the Resto- 
ration he had a violent quarrel with Charles II., and attacked that 
prince in a private audience, with an intemperance of language 
perhaps never before nor since used by a subject to a sovereign. On 
receiving a denial of some request, he burst into the most bitter in- 
vectives ; reproached the king with his idleness and debaucheries, 
and threatened that in twenty- four hours he would do " somewhat 
that should awaken the king out of his slumber, and make him look 
better to his own business." This menace was explained, a few 
days after, by his preferring a charge of high treason in the House 
of Peers against Lord Clarendon, for which he was obliged to fly 
and conceal himself for two years. He survived until 1677, when 
he died at Chelsea, leaving two sons and two daughters by his wife. 
Lady Anne Russell. 

Note H^ p. 43. — Courtiers of James I. 

There is in the Strafford papers, among Mr. Garrard's lively 
letters of court news, one to the Lord Went worth, afterwards Earl 
of Strafford, then in Ireland, chiefly on the subject of this match. 
It exhibits some curious features of the manners of some of the 
highest of James's courtiers :—" The marriage," says Mr. Gar- 
rard, " will now shortly, at Easter, be solemnised. A most fine 
lady. My Lord of Bedford loves money a little too much, which, 
together with my Lord of Somerset's unexpected poverty, hath been 
the cause of this long treaty, not any diminution of the young par- 
ties' affection, who are all in a flame of love. * * * My Lord 
of Somerset pretends that he lent my Lord Goring three thousand 
pounds, when he was in the tower, and being now in some straits 
about raising the portion, he hath sent to the Lord Goring and de- 
manded it of him. He denies it lent, for he says it was given for 
real services then done him, which the Duke of Bucks could wit- 
ness, were he Uving. This hath made a great noise, and much 
siding in the business. My lord chamberlain," (the eccentric and 
profligate Philip, Earl of Pembroke, husband to Anne Clifford,) 
" most fierce to carry it for Somerset, being one night at Sahsbury 
House, fell into discourse about this three thousand pounds, saying 



VI. APPENDIX. 

that it was due to my Lord of Somerset, and that Somerset would 
ask leave of the king to sue my Lord Goring, and that he would 
recover it, for somewhat that he knew. This he speaking with 
great vehemence, my Lord Powis, being by, spoke to moderate him, 
especially since it concerned my Lord Goring, who had always been 
his true and faithful friend. He replied he loved my Lord Goring 
well, but he loved a truth better. For one good service my Lord 
Goring had done him he had requited him with twenty. Powis 
said that he believed further that my Lord Goring was unable sud- 
denly, if it were due, to pay such a sum ; and asked him whether 
he would make himself a soUcitor, to gather in Somerset's debts. 
That word ' solicitor' heated his lordship. He fell into high pas- 
sion, and swore deeply, ' God damn me, I have seen a letter under 
my Lord Goring's hand, where he confesseth the debt, and it must 
be a great courtesy must deserve three thousand pounds. It was a 
gift for a prince to give, not for a subject. Let my Lord Goring 
shew wherein he did ever my Lord Somerset a courtesy worth 
three hundred pounds, and he shall quit his three thousand, for 
which he hath his letter to show.' My Lady Salisbury saying — ' If 
he had such a letter to shew, let him shew it, and the business was 
at an end.' That ' If,' the lord chamberlain took worse from her 
than any thing spoken before — ' Would she If, when he had sworn 
he had seen it ?' Still she repeated ' If ;' and she thought she might 
say If to the king, much more to him. She further told him that 
in all disputes he must have his own way, but he should not have it 
of her — He should not silence her in her own house— She would 
speak. So she rose up, and went out from him, and the company, 
into her chamber. But it must not rest so. My Lady Vaux, and 
my Lady Powis, undertook his lordship, and he being in an excel- 
lent good disposition, they brought him to a better temper, and to 
more reason, which effected, in they go to my Lady Salisbury's 
chamber, who was now the angrier of the two. There they made 
them friends : Powis made them kiss. Sicfinita estfabula^ 

Note /, p. 61.— A Duke Horsewhipped. 

It was in this year (1748), that an incident occurred which has 
been variously described. The duke being at Lichfield races, a 
brutal assault was attempted upon him and others, on Whittington 
Heath, by some Jacobites to whom he was obnoxious from his 
zealous duty to the House of Hanover. One Tott, a dancing-mas- 
ter, seems to have been the leader in the affray. During the na- 
tional ferment consequent on the suppression of the rebellion, the 
Staffordshire sportsmen who were of the Chevalier's party indulged 
in some ludicrous displays of favour towards his pretensions. 
" They appeared," says Smollett, " in the highland dress, and their 
zeal descending to a very extraordinary exhibition of practical ridi- 
cule, they hunted with hounds clothed in plaid, a fox dressed in 
red uniform ! " This was " sporting extraordinary" with a ven- 
geance. The parties principally concerned in this outrage, to the 
number of thirteen, were prosecuted by the Attorney- General, but 
the prosecution was dropped on their pleading guilty to the indict- 



APPENDIX. Vll. 

ment. In a note, in Junius^ we find the following allusion to the 
affair :— " Mr. Heston Humphrey, a country attorney, horse- 
whipped the duke with equal justice, severity, and perseverance, on 
the course at Litchfield. Rigby and Lord Trentham were also 
cudgelled in a most exemplary manner. This gave rise to the fol- 
lowing story : When the late king heard that Sir Edward Hawke 
had given the French a drubbing^ his majesty, who had never re- 
ceived that kind of chastisement, was pleased to ask Lord Chester- 
field the meaning of the world. ' Sir,' says Lord Chesterfield, ' the 
meaning of the word — But litre comes the Duke of Bedford, who 
is better able to explain it to your majesty than I am.' " 

Note t/, jD. ^b, — The King and the Duke. 

The account given, in our edition of Junius^ of this interview, 
is as follows : — " The ministry having endeavoured to exclude the 
dowager out of the regency bill, the Earl of Bute determined to 
dismiss them. Upon this the Duke of Bedford demanded an audi- 
ence of the king ; reproached him in plain terms with his duplicity, 
baseness, falsehood, treachery, and hypocrisy ; repeatedly gave 
him the lie, and left him in convulsions." — Mr. Wiffen, however, 
characterises this as a " most gross misrepresentation." 

Note K, p. 69.— Parental Feeling. 

Referring to this domestic misfortune, Junius says :— " I reve- 
rence the afflictions of a good man ; his sorrows are sacred. But 
how can we take part in the distresses of a man whom we can 
neither love nor esteem ; or feel for a calamity of which he himself 
is insensible ? Where was the father's heart, when he could look 
for, or find, an immediate consolation for the loss of an only son, 
in consultations and bargains for a place at court, and even in the 
misery of balloting at the India House ?" And again, in a note, it 
is added : — " Within a fortnight after Lord Tavistock's death the 
venerable Gertrude (the duchess) had a rout at Bedford-house. 
The good duke (who had only sixty thousand pounds a year) 
ordered an inventory to be taken of his son's wearing apparel, 
down to his slippers, sold them all, and put the money in his pocket. 
The amiable marchioness, shocked at such brutal, unfeeling ava- 
rice, gave the value of the clothes to the marquis's servant out of 
her own purse. That incom.parable woman did not long survive 
her husband. When she died, the Duchess of Bedford treatediier 
as the duke had treated his only son ; she ordered every gown and 
trinket to be sold, and pocketed the money. These are the mon- 
sters whom Sir William Draper comes forward to defend." 

Note L, p. 74. — Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford. 

The cause of the duke's death is more particularly described in 
the following paragraph, by the late Wilham Cobbett : — ' Twenty- 
two years ago I, being out a shooting, jumped from a bank full ten 
feet high, into the field below, and thereby produced by the shock, 



Vlll. APPENDIX. 

something which gave me very great pain, but of the nature of 
which I knew nothing. I came to London and appUed to the late 
Mr. Chevalier, the surgeon, who directed me to get a truss, which 
I did. And here I gladly stop to acknowledge the only good I, 
and T believe any other human creature, ever received at the hands 
of old Daddy Burdett. Having told him what had brought me to 
town, ' Well,' said he, ' when you have put a truss on, never leave 
it off in the belief that you no longer want it.' A precept which he 
made effectual by relating to me the cause of the sudden and pre- 
mature death of Francis, Duke of Bedford, who, thinking his 
rupture gone for ever, threw aside his truss, but in playing at fives, 
a sudden twist of his body brought on the complaint again, and 
sending for a surgeon to London, instead of calling in him of the 
village, a mortification took place, and he slept with his fathers in 
a few hours. Many times, and especially in hot weather, I have 
by this advice, and especially by the illustration of Daddy Burdett, 
been prevented from risking the fate of the Duke of Bedford." 

Note M^ p. 76. — Woburn Abbey. 

The present mansion was built in the middle of the last century, 
on the site of a Cistercian abbey, which was originally founded in 
1145, and granted to the Russell family, as mentioned in the text, 
in the reign of Edward VI. On the removal of some of the old 
buildings, several stone coffins were discovered ; and a body, with 
the flesh not decomposed, although it was supposed to have lain 
there for between two and three centuries. The building is quad- 
rangular, containing some very splendid apartments, and a rare 
collection of portraits, and situated in a fine park, ten miles in 
circumference, well stocked with deer and game. — The neighbour- 
ing town of Woburn, which contains a population of about 2000, 
consists of several broad and well-built streets, the houses in which 
are principally of a modern character, in consequence of two 
dreadful fires which destroyed the greater part of the dwellings in 
1594 and 1724. The market-house, a convenient edifice, was built 
in 1787, by Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford, but was altered and 
greatly improved by the late duke. Some of the inhabitants are 
employed in straw-plaiting and lace-making. A sheep-shearing 
feast is held annually, when prizes are distributed to those who 
produce the finest fleeces. The church, dedicated to ^t. Mary, 
erected by Robert Hobbs, the last abbot of Woburn, is nearly 
covered with ivy ; and detached from the building is a quadran- 
gular tower, about fifty feet high. Within is a curious monument 
to Sir Francis Stanton and family, comprising twelve figures in 
the attitude of prayer. The pulpit is very ancient, supposed to 
be coeval with the abbey, and richly ornamented with niches, 
pillars, and tracery. Here there is also a freeschool, founded by 
Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford, in 1782, for an unlimited number 
of children of both sexes; the number of scholars is about 150; 
and the institution is supported by £50 given annually by the Duke 
of Bedford and other voluntary contributions. There are also 
twelve almshouses founded by John, Duke of Bedford, for twenty- 
four poor widows. 



NOTES ON THE NOBILITY, No. I., 
CONTAINING 

SKETCH OF THE HISTOEY OF THE 
HOUSE OF EUSSELL 

(Dedicated hy special permission to the Right Honourable Lord 
John Russell.) 

OPINIONS OF THE WORK. 

'* The Notes on the Nobility are most interesting, and evince 
great historic and genealogical knowledge."— Xe^^er to the 
Author, from J. Bernard Bur ice, Esq., author of ** Burke's 
Peerage" " The Historic Lands of England" ^c, %c. 

" Our contemporary, the Liverpool Chronicle, has recently 
contained a series of " Notes on the Nobility," written with so 
much taste, judgment, research, and impartiality, that the 
public have eagerly called for their republication in a less 
evanescent form. We have now before ua the first number, 
embracing all that is historical or notable in the * House of 
Russell.* Mr. Ross * nothing extenuates,* nor has he * set down 
aught in malice.* He tells the story of all the Russells with 
ease, eloquence, and brevity, but with sufficient fullness, and 
he has added a well- written memoir of Lord John Russell, to 
whom the work is, by permission, dedicated. We have seldom 
seen so much desirable family history compressed into so small 
a compass ; and one portion of British history cannot, perhaps, 
be better taught than in the lives of our principal aristocracy,— 
proceeding from the conquest to the present day. Books of 
peerage are too brief, and too technical; here we have, in 
a readable form, the precise information we want." — Liverpool 
Journal. 

" Notes on the Nobility : No. 1, The House of Russell.— 
This interesting little publication from the pen of Mr. Ross, 
proprietor of the Liverpool Chronicle, furnishes a desideratum 
in popular literature. The works of Burke, Lodge, and other 
eminent genealogists and dignitaries of the Herald's College 
are far too elaborate, technical, and expensive for ordinary 
circulation; but the series of brochures already executed or 
designed by Mr. Ross will, we are sure, be met with a ready 
and extensive welcome. The family histories of many of our 
nobility have, in addition to their historical and constitutional 
value, not unfrequently all the exciting history of a romance. 
Without descending too much into minutiae, the author of this 
little sketch has, nevertheless, so presented the reader with 
every cirucm stance of the private or public career of this ancient 
and honourable family, which is calculated to be generally 
interesting or instructive, as to impress forcibly the conviction 
upon the mind that he has handled his materials in a thoroughly 
skilful and masterly manner. We cordially congratulate Mr. 
Ross upon his d-ebut in the literary world, and commend his 
entertaining and unpretending little production to the perusal 
of our Teaders."— Nottingham Mercury, (edited by P. J. Bailey, 
Esq., Author of*' Festus." J 

" Sketch of the History of the House of Russell.— We 
owe an apology to the author of this little work, and to our 
readers as well, for not having sooner directed attention to it in 



11. 

our columns. Mr. Ross's sketch of this illustrious house- 
illustrious for the talent, heroism, virtue and patriotism which 
have belonged to its members from the remote line of its first 
founder to the present day— displays great genealogical research 
and historical and biographical knowledge. It is written in an 
excellent and impartial spirit ; and conveys to the reader, in the 
compass of a small volume, a story of interesting information, 
which could only be gleaned by him from the perusal of many 
bulky records, some of which are beyond the reach of the mass, 
whilst the compilation from them of the details sought for 
would involve an amount of time and labour which few have 
at their disposal. The plan of these ** Notes on the Nobility," 
which we observe are intended to embrace the history of some 
of our most eminent families, is an excellent and a happy one ; 
and we look forward with great interest to the continuation of 
the series. The notes appended to the Sketch of the House of 
Russell are very valuable. We may remark, en passant, that 
there are few subjects upon which Englishmen generally are 
more imperfectly informed than the history of our great ances- 
tral houses, connected although some of them have been so 
intimately with the renown of our country, and with the insti- 
tutions under which we live. Mr. Ross's unobtrusive, though 
most valuable labour, will go far to remove this reproach ; and 
may even urge the enquirer to a further pursuit of a most 
interesting study." — Liverpool Standard, 

'* The * Notes on the Nobility' reflect great credit on the in- 
dustry of the compiler, the task of condensing and putting into a 
popular shape the immense mass of materials necessary to be em- 
ployed in the prosecution of such a work, being one of no ordinary 
labour and dilSculty. The ' History of the House of Russell' 
is one of the most interesting of the serie* ; and we have no 
doubt that the expectation which has led to its being reprinted 
in its present form will be amply fulfilled. It is written in a 
fair and impartial spirit, and justly claims the attention of all 
Englishmen, as a record of historical facts concerning a family 
the leading member of which now occupies so prominent a posi- 
tion in the government of the Goxmtry.''— Liverpool Courier. 

" History of the House of Russell.— The author of the 
little book before us has supplied a desideratum, and may fairly 
be considered a benefactor to society. He has given vast thought, 
energy, and perseverance to the preparation of a series of brief 
sketches, in which the lives and marked characteristics of the 
chief members of our aristocracy are clearly depicted, and now 
publishes them at a price that will place them within the reach 
of those whose means are most moderate. At th^ same time 
there is a fulness, a completeness, and an accuracy in these pro- 
ductions which would fairly entitle them, with some slight ex- 
purgations, to be received into our principal schools as class- 
books. Mr. Ross has evinced a remarkable aptitude for the 
discharge of the task which he has imposed on himself, com- 
bining the clearest conception, with unwearied assiduity in re- 
search, and the greatest tact in dealing with the materials which 
his industry has educed. His * Notes,' which we confidently 
predict will yet attain deserved celebrity, originally appeared in 
the Liverpool Chronicle, of which paper he is the proprietor, and 
his modesty, perhaps, would have deterred him from pressing 
them further upon the public attention ; but their value having 
forced itself upon the convictions of his friends, by their advice 
he has consented to put them into this more enduring form. 
We cordially recommend the work to the encouragement of our 
friends, and shall be pleased if any thing which we have felt it 
our duty and privilege to say in its favour shall aid in securing 
for it an extensive reception." — Liverpool Mail. 



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